


Interstate 80

by iKnowGuacIsExtra



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Ambitious But Rubbish, Boys Will Be Boys, Everyone Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, The Author Regrets Everything, being soft, god just let them be happy, soft bois, the 80s roadtrip au that no one needed but
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 29,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iKnowGuacIsExtra/pseuds/iKnowGuacIsExtra
Summary: “I need someone to help me get to California.”Ash raises his eyebrows. “Let me get this straight. You need me to be your American guide. To help you take a road trip across the fucking country. And this is all because, what, I’m not safe in my home town?”“I can’t read English signs fast enough,” Eiji explains, unconvincingly. After a few more seconds of expectant silence, he adds, “I think I drove on the left side of the road the whole way here from New Jersey.”“Eiji,” Ash says his name in that beguiling American accent, the corner of his mouth turning up. “You’re fucking insane."The story of Banana Fish retold (more or less competently) through the lens of two lost souls on their journey from Cape Cod, New England to Los Angeles, California. Aslan Jade Callenrease, a self-established vigilante with a thirst for freedom, catches a ride on Interstate 80 as a result of some...extenuating circumstances. One of those circumstances being Okumura Eiji, a freelance photographer, old enough to break away from his status quo and young enough to try.When two separate worlds collide, one can only hope their journey is homeward bound.After all, home is where the heart is.





	1. The Love Club (Lorde)

**Author's Note:**

> "I was in but I want out  
> My mother's love is choking me  
> I'm sick of words that hang above my head  
> What about the kid? It's time the kid got free."  
> \- Lorde, The Love Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of Banana Fish retold (more or less competently) through the lense of two lost souls on their journey from Cape Cod, New England to Los Angeles, California. Aslan Jade Callenrease, a self-established vigilante with a thirst for freedom, catches a ride on Interstate 80 as a result of some...extenuating circumstances. One of those circumstances being Okamura Eiji, the epitome of a freelance photographer and the very definition of wanderlust, old enough to break away from his status quo and young enough to try.  
> When two separate worlds collide, one can only hope their journey is homeward bound. After all, home is where the heart is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I was in but I want out  
> My mother's love is choking me  
> I'm sick of words that hang above my head  
> What about the kid? It's time the kid got free."  
> Lorde, The Love Club

For 17-year-old Aslan Jade Callenrease, karma’s a sweet-talking, know-nothing bitch.

He gets the action-means-consequence thing, imperceptibly. In fact, he made a living by it. When Lisa Gruber slipped him twenty bucks and a not-so-subtle hook up (the latter of which he adamantly refused, she was the equivalent of a mountain lion with a diet of MAC gloss and her bottom lip) in exchange for beating up her ex-boyfriend Cole on the New Year’s Eve Party Saturday night, how could he refuse? From the moment Cole’s posh, uptown parents saw his bloodied mess of a face, it was only a matter of time before the school suspension rolled in. They couldn’t prove it was him. And of course, when Arthur and his dickwad friends found out about Ash’s little…shenanigans (as Jim liked to put it), Ash almost expected the scope of their retaliation.

Almost.

Then again, this was always par with the course. When Mom left, Jim should have felt the volume of his actions, but he never did. Griffin and Ash were supposed to stick together, through thick and thin, but now he was roaming around somewhere in Afghanistan, gone from Ash’s world and in someone else’s, noble for everyone except his kid brother.

Nevertheless, life had never fucked him over quite like this unholy winter evening.

It started when Max very unceremoniously pulled into the Johnny’s on the outskirts of their town for a “good-natured talk,” which was damn skippy if Ash had a pair of earmuffs and attention span to boot. Unfortunately, neither was the case.

Ever since Griffin left for the army, his best friend Max “Big Mouth” Lobo had taken it upon himself to be the father he thought Ash needed and the big brother he didn’t. Max never answered Ash bluntly, but it was painfully clear to understand the end-of-the-week boys' nights were a set up by Griffin to curb any of Ash’s volatile episodes in and outside the home. And whether the Max’s meetings were for Griffin’s sake or Ash’s, Ash could never tell. Either way, the pity parties pissed him off.

Needless to say, it was a fucking swell way to spend the frigid Friday night. It’s not like Ash had anyone else to spend the time with; Shorter would always be busy trying to get laid at one of the several lame raves where every teen in Cape Cod got high in the loud music and dark rooms and pretended they didn’t know each other all their lives. Ash couldn’t blame them; he did his own fair share of pretending to be patient, to be balanced, to be fine.

There was a silver lining: after Max got tired of talking to the side of Ash’s head, he bought him Shirley Temple’s and cheap beer for himself until he got so drunk he couldn’t tell the difference.

When that time came, at about 10 pm, Ash could sit on the outside the sliding doors and drink the leftover beer, listen to the drone of generators behind the shop and radio static from Max’s busted cream-and-brown pickup down the road. He could watch the same people walking into the pub and feel the occasional whoosh of opening and closing doors, warm recycled air on his back. He could dream about driving off and never looking back, onto I-80 and up into somewhere like Sante Fe—hell, even Paris—where anything could happen.

He vaguely remembered Griffin telling him his mom was French. Maybe one day he’d be walking along the streets in some foreign nation and see her in a coffee shop, or a disco.

Maybe she would even recognize him.

 For now, though, Ash let his fantasy stifle under Max’s drunken version of that one Caroline song and hiccupping storytelling of memories from his first love, Jessica, of whom Ash only bothered to remember moving to California a few years back after a hideous break-up. He never found out how the story ended because he tuned out the rest and because each rendition seemed more tragic than last. Ash felt like each year at Cape Cod felt more tragic than last. But for now he let the time pass and waited. For what, he never really knew.

The Weekly Discussions with Yours Truly ft. Max Lobo went a little something like this:

Max: Hey kiddo. How’s a life been treating ya this past week?

Ash: Fine.

Max: Just fine, huh? Heard you suspended actually. For the, uh, little bump with that Cole kid?

Ash liked to think ‘bump’ was an understatement. It was like calling Cole’s new dental scenario a little ‘moving around.’

Ash: What do you want me to say?

Max: Christ, Ash, I saw him. Kid’s gonna have some trouble getting a girlfriend from now on, with a face like that.

Ash: That was the idea.

Max, at a loss for words, decided to fill the indignant silence with a swig from his beer, running a hand through his hair.

Max: Listen, I know at your age you might feel very Rebel with a Cause and all, but this is the fourth time this year Ash. How are you going to college with this crap on your record?

Ash: I don’t care. The stuff they teach in school is a pile of horseshit anyway. Can’t you be on my side for once?

Queue Max’s exasperated sigh and Ash’s evil satisfaction in making him upset. Almost triumphantly, he kicked his converses onto the dashboard. Max seemed extra frustrated today.

Max: Come on, Aslan. Think about your brother. Do you think he’d be pleased how you’ve been treating yourself and your old man all this time? Griff’s had a hard enough time in wherever-the-Hell he is and it’s not a whole lot better with you acting up like this.

At this time Ash realizes Max has never mentioned Griffin so bluntly. Ash feels his blood boil.

“Don’t you think I know that?”

Max turns his head to scowl out the window. “It’s like you forget sometimes.”

                That’s the last straw.

“How dare you. Don’t you think I worry about what he’s doing when all we hear on the news is of bombs and blood and war?! I’m so—“ He forces his voice not to shake, welcoming the newfound rage rising in his stomach, warming him up. “I’m so sick of all your fucking pretending. Pretending like I’m some goddamn problem to fix, like it’s a fucking favor for Griffin.”

His outbursts aren’t really directed at Max anymore, who’s staring at him paralyzed. He’s angry at Max, at Griffin for leaving him behind, and most of all at himself for having to stay. He’s angry for the inevitable busting-up he’ll get from Arthur and his gang because of stupid Lisa Gruber and her petty cash.

But for now, yelling at Max’s stupid face and storming out, out of it all, seems like a damn great idea if he’s ever had one.

Max is staring at him in quiet horror as if he’s watching the car crash in slow motion, palms splayed and waving like a flag of surrender. “Wait, Ash, I didn’t mean—“ He starts, but it’s too late.

Ash’s voice is low and filled with malice in his throat, surprising even himself. “Fuck. You.”

In one fluid motion, Ash is ripping out of the pickup and tearing down the street anywhere away from the old pub. He knows Max won’t bother going after him because really, where is there to go?

In this moment, the wind feels great in Ash’s hair and he’s hopped up on the thrill of escaping, even for minutes. Thinking back, this may have been the biggest decision he ever made. It’s hard to know how things would have turned out if Ash accepted his fate, swallowed the stale beer and empty promises and stay put that night. In this moment, seventeen-year-old Ash decides he wants more than that. He makes the choice, accepts the fate.

Karma may be a bitch, but Aslan Jade Callenrease has a plan—something simmering in his brain for months, years—that might just work.


	2. Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of Banana Fish retold (more or less competently) through the lense of two lost souls on their journey from Cape Cod, New England to Los Angeles, California. Aslan Jade Callenrease, a self-established vigilante with a thirst for freedom, catches a ride on Interstate 80 as a result of some...extenuating circumstances. One of those circumstances being Okamura Eiji, the epitome of a freelance photographer and the very definition of wanderlust, old enough to break away from his status quo and young enough to try.  
> When two separate worlds collide, one can only hope their journey is homeward bound. After all, home is where the heart is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”  
> ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

The mechanical chime sounds as Ash slips into Cape Cod’s only Gas n Go, trying and failing to inconspicuously catch his breath. Luckily, he can count the amount of people in the store on one hand. A scan of the people around him; two old bikers with moldy heads, a girl at the register looking bored out her mind, and finally a young man inspecting a shelf of hot cocoa powders as if they were the Holy fucking Grail.

Ash stalks through the cramped aisles, hands in his pockets, not really sure what to do with his temporary freedom. For a while, he wanders and stops at intervals to make it less suspicious when he slips items into his jeans, jacket, even waistband. Simple things, just toothbrushes and socks. It was so easy for Ash to take them for granted when he had a stable home.

The residual anger from his fight with Max has diluted to fatigue but his veins are still thrumming. So when the cashier calls out, “Excuse me, sir.” Ash instinctively stiffens.  Daring to look around, he’s a bit relieved and a bit more intrigued when her warning isn’t for him. His gaze lands on a young man and his breath catches.

Of the many peculiarities in the scene Ash takes in, the person across the register peaks Ash’s curiosity. At first glance, the elbow-patched cardigan and leather loafers allude to maturity, but this man doesn’t look a day older than his twenties. Then he turns, doe-eyes peeking out under dark sweeping bangs, Ash decides he could even be younger. He’s of some Asian extraction, prettier than most all of the girls Ash has seen in his life and yet boyishly attractive.

And then there’s the small haphazard pile of the most random collection of items. From the hot chocolate powder to razor blades and then a goddamn stationary pack, the guy looks stocked for the zombie apocalypse.

Ash doesn’t realize he’s walked closer until he hears snippets of their heated conversation. Mystery Boy is fumbling through his wallet with—what is that, a duck? who fucking knows—embroidered on it, along some ambiguously Asian looking writing. Ash recognizes the cashier from high school, but he has to read her name tag (“Barbara”) to know for sure.

“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t accept yen,” She drawls in a strong Boston accent, inspecting her fake nails. Ash fights the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all, a small part of him enlightened to discover the boy’s Japanese.

“Ah—I’m so sorry—“Japanese Stranger says, with English too deliberate to be the first language. Still, his accent is faint, with round vowels slipping around the r’s. It’s …different, way different from the Southern belles and tight-lipped New Yorkers. “I run out of American cash.”

He notices Ash and smiles guiltily. “Sorry for the wait.” It’s the first time in a long time someone looked him straight in the eyes. The first time it wasn’t with fear, or rage, or some mixture of both.

The moment passes and Ash realizes, belatedly, that he has unconsciously moved in line behind the boy with nothing in his hands. The lurid anger he felt not an hour ago has dulled into background noise, like the static on Max's radio when they're both so drunk that everything feels...nostalgic. Ash feels like he wanted to say something, but now he can’t remember.

Barbara huffs and flips her hair to the other side, pointing to the door. “There’s an ATM outside if you needa withdraw money.” There is no ATM outside, but he wouldn't know. Ash almost feels bad.

“Do you know if they take JCB?” The foreigner asks, poor guy, slipping a credit card in a color Ash has never seen (Ash sees a lot) and holding it between two fingers.

She gives him a blank stare, blowing a bubble as pink as her hair extensions.

“Uhh.” He says. In profile, Ash sees his nose scrunch up when he smiles. Barbara’s crusty black mascara has nothing on the sooty lashes this boy has. “I will go check.” The wad of money from Gruber and then snaked from Max’s wallet feels heavy in Ash’s pockets.

Barbara resumes a beat-up paperback, grunting in response. “Next.” She has a practiced indifference, but the tension is there. Whether she found out by means of rumor or firsthand account, it doesn’t matter now. She knows who he is.  

“I was wondering where the restroom is,” Ash says. Barbara’s eyes l flicker to the pockets of his jacket suspiciously, but that’s as far up as she goes. They both know she wouldn’t dare, and she doesn't.

“Just down the hall, first right.”

                Ash ends up slapping a five on the counter because why the hell not and walks out with a hot cocoa plus his several pocketed items. A tiny, insignificant part of him wonders if the Japanese boy ever found that ATM, and maybe also if he drinks hot cocoa, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! It's me again. Crazy, right? Please let me know if the incessant 80s remixes I listened to were effective, for the sake of my sanity. Chapter warnings apply later, but stay tuned! It's a long ride.  
> I hope to be as consistent as I can pumping out chapters, but they will be of varying lengths. Again, any feedback is much appreciated, thanks much!
> 
> P.S. The book Barbara's reading is Catcher in the Rye.


	3. Sante Fe (The Newsies)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Let me go.  
> Far away.  
> Somewhere they won't ever find me,  
> and tomorrow won't remind me of today.  
> And the city's finally sleepin'.  
> And the moon looks old and grey.  
> I get on a train thats bound for Santa Fe."  
> Newsies, Santa Fe

To his surprise, the foreigner is sitting on the curb when Ash walks out of the store. He’s cradling a Polaroid between his hands, letting go only to blow on his hands against the cold. Time does a weird thing where Ash doesn’t know how much of it has passed since he stood there, watching the guy watch the empty gas station like its Shangri La or some shit.

                “It helps if you put something on the counter.” Ash doesn’t remember saying words aloud but the boy turns around regardless. Looks him straight in the eyes again, too, Christ almighty. He needs to get used to that.

                “Huh?” He says. Eloquent.

                “I mean, if you really need something and you don’t have the money.” Mystery boy’s eyebrows rise and disappear under his bangs, and at this point, neither of them really knows why Ash keeps talking. “They trust you more if you put something of yours on the counter, it’s like you really want to buy.”

                The guy still doesn’t get it.

                “If you want to steal.”

                By the looks of him, Ash half expects the boy to have some kind of holier-than-thou type reaction, but instead he makes a thoughtful noise and breathes into his hands. Ash figures he doesn’t understand, chalking it up to the language barrier.

                A pause, then he twists back around to look up at Ash. “What did you put on the counter for that?”

Smart kid. Probably not language barrier then, but it’s ironic how this is the most conversation he’s had with someone who isn’t Max, Shorter, or the principal.

                “Didn’t need to.” He’s the one to look at the lights now, because if this guy stares into him any longer he just might see Ash’s soul. “Either way there’s enough cocoa in there to feed a goddamn town, I doubt they’ll miss it.”

                “That is true,” The foreign boy scoots a bit to the left even though he’s not in Ash’s way, very subtly offering a piece of tobacco-stained, butt-ugly sidewalk. A random act of…conversation? There has to be a catch.

The whole situation can’t get any stranger, but for some reason Ash can’t bring himself to refuse the proposal.

Ash figures he has nothing better to do. He raises a shoulder, feigning indifference. Ash sits.

The boy next to him is an open book, very poorly hiding his delight by the invisible dust on his corduroys. Fucking corduroys, by the way. Who the fuck is this guy?

“You’re right.” He gets a faraway look when he speaks again. “There’s more than enough of everything here.”

“Here?”

“I came from Japan,” The boy responds, eyes flitting to Ash shyly before settling on his camera. “Izumo to America. For photography.”

“Damn.” That explains the accent, at least. “You, all alone?” He doesn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. It’s the one thing that feels familiar to Ash at this moment.

The other boy sits up straighter defensively, insulted. “I am nineteen years old. I am perfectly capable.” He cares too much for this not to be a common misunderstanding. Eyebrows draw together into a pout and ironically, he looks even younger. Something inside Ash ripples.

“Fuckin hell.” It’s so unexpected that Ash doesn’t recognize his laugh. It’s nothing more than a breathy exhale but fuck if Ash can remember the last time he found something funny. “I didn’t mean it like that—“

The tips of the boy’s ears turn pink, as he gets more visibly upset. “Oh, really—“

“—I just meant, like,” Ash struggles not to grin, for the other boy’s sake. The laugh seeps into his voice, making it close to an octave higher. “Fuck. I meant, like Japan is halfway across the world.”

“How old are you, then?” The Japanese-in-question glowers, still not buying it.

“Seventeen.” Ash focuses on the hot chocolate in his hands, expecting the shocked silence.

“That’s no fair.” Raven-haired boy smiles, half-joking. “You look so old for so young.”

Ash scrapes at something in the concrete with his shoe. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

 

It’s really isn’t fair, he finds himself thinking as they ease into something resembling small talk.

The boy next to him is a picture drawn in charcoal, dark and comforting. The harsh fluorescent gas station light diffusing in dark eyes. Even darker lashes casting shadows on cheeks made ruddy by the cold so it looks like he’s always in a half-dreaming, half-awake state. There’s vulnerability about him, like Ash is staring at a mirage that might just disappear if he breathes too hard. As if the air itself bends around his shoulders, afraid to touch and interrupt his reverie.

Where the boy is slopes and curves, Ash is angles and edges. A sharpness that has won him more fights than pity and yet, still he feels resentment.

Ash doesn’t like to think of how he looks, or when he did have childish features—if he ever did—because it makes him think of his mom. Four years old, hugging her leg, watching her apply lipstick in the mirror and smile at him in the reflection. Fluttering her eyelashes against his pudgy baby cheeks and telling him it was a butterfly. How she used to call him Kiwi in funny voices. ‘My Ki-wi, if you frown all day you grow old twice as fast.’ She never frowned: ‘Mama doesn’t want wrinkles, Kiwi.’ In a way, that was almost worse. His mother always smiled through the tears.

 

The boy takes any opportunity to study the gas station again. He fiddles with his camera, holding it up and peering through the viewfinder on occasion. It’s a comfortable gesture.

Ash gathers enough courage to break it: “So, uh, what’s your name again?”

Said boy’s head tilts, eyes never leaving the viewfinder. “Hmm?”

Ash glares at the ground, taking a swig of the hot cocoa even if it burns his tongue. “What is. Your name.” _I’m tired of calling you ‘boy’ in my head._

“Ah.” He puts down the camera to hold out a hand. His palm is warm and his fingertips are cold. “I’m Eiji. Nice to meet you.”

“A-G.” He repeats, not achieving the lilt like Eiji says it.

“More ‘A’, less ‘G’,” Eiji has a habit of raising his eyebrows when he smiles. Not quite a grin, more like he’s on the brink of learning something fascinating. “Eiji Okamura. We get to the Okamura later.” Later. Eiji lets the Polaroid dangle from a strap around his neck, props elbows on knees and places his cheeks on his hands to warm them. “What’s your name, then?”

Part of Ash is still secretly elated there’s even a prospect of later with Eiji. He steels himself against it. Think practically. “Christopher Smith.” It would be best if Eiji didn’t have a way to contact Ash. Arthur’s guys were still out for blood, no matter whose it was.

“Christopher Smith.” Eiji muses. Ash wonders, selfishly, how his real name would sound in Eiji’s accent. “Why are you here, Mr. Smith?”

“That’s what I want to know too,” Ash stretches his legs and inspects his Converses. It seems like hours ago when he propped them up on Max’s dashboard, full of spite. “I don’t know why I still live in this shithole town.”

Again, he expects a bigger reaction from his language. Eiji is reassuringly silent, rubbing his hands together and resting his chin in them again. Then, “I understand.”

“Really?” Ash is only a little bit sarcastic this time.

“Yes, I grew up in the small town in Japan called Izumo. It was…nice, family and a job and everything. But, no life. Just old people and older tradition.”

Ash can’t hide his curiosity now. “So you just. Up and left?”

Eiji smiles, melancholic. “No, I never would have gone without some other conflict. My family and I don’t agree on many things, but I’m grateful they agreed to at least let me leave in peace.” He rubs his eyes, suddenly tired. “But Japan, America, all countries are basically the same. Just groups of people staying together to feel safe.”

In the pregnant silence that follows, Ash thinks that’s fucking profound. It moves something in him, reels him in.

“I want to go to Sante Fe,” He blurts. Eiji blinks at him but says nothing, listening. “Or San Francisco or London or—what the fuck, even Paris or something, maybe. I – I, uh, I think my mom lives in France.” He sneaks another glance at Eiji, terrified he might start laughing. Eiji stares back, unwavering. “Or—I don’t fuckin know, every day I wake up knowing I’m going to live and die here and it makes me lose my goddamn mind.”

Another mind-numbing silence. The need for validation—whatever kind—has never had any influence on Ash, but it feels like Eiji’s would. Ash holds his breath, listens to the distant sounds of semis on the highway.

“You are not losing your mind.” Eiji gives Ash a meaningful look before closing his eyes, turning forward as if he's reliving it as they speak. Remembering. “I felt the same way.”

If that’s not the most comforting thing Ash has heard on a Friday boys’ night, he’ll be damned. Imagine Max’s delight when he finds out that in some roundabout way his actions had a healing effect on Ash. Knowing Max, he’ll think it’s fate. “Karma, or something,” He’d say, followed by something stupid that ruins it all like “Kid, I swear I was a Hindu in my past life.”

But for the former, he’d be right. Eiji was the beginning of the means to an end, the best part of an otherwise horrible course of events. Then again, that was always par with the course.

Because for Aslan Jade Callenrease, karma was and always would be a bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Hope you liked this garbage. Please let me know of any characters you'd like introduced and I will try to integrate them. This is my first fic, any response is much appreciated!


	4. Prayer X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of Banana Fish retold (more or less competently) through the lense of two lost souls on their journey from Cape Cod, New England to Los Angeles, California. Aslan Jade Callenrease, a self-established vigilante with a thirst for freedom, catches a ride on Interstate 80 as a result of some...extenuating circumstances. One of those circumstances being Okamura Eiji, the epitome of a freelance photographer and the very definition of wanderlust, old enough to break away from his status quo and young enough to try.  
> When two separate worlds collide, one can only hope their journey is homeward bound.  
> After all, home is where the heart is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I don't believe in God, but I'm a hypocrite.  
> "Most nights, I pray.  
> A track running in the background.  
> I pray for a way out.  
> Away from another institution.  
> Away from another monster.  
> Away from another cage.  
> I pray for help."  
> Rick Remender, Deadly Class, Book One: Noise Noise Noise

Ash and Eiji are talking for the next seconds, minutes, hours? Fuck if Ash knows. That night, it’s like even the hourglass of time lies on its side to sleep, the sands within it standing still. It feels like a dream, a luxury Ash cannot afford on sleepless nights, when a small part of him wishing to share everything and nothing for a few hours with someone close. Ash and Eiji swap bits and pieces of their stories, dreams, insecurities in the midst of it, both of them stuck somewhere between asleep and awake.

Eiji’s a photography student, doing an apprenticeship with some guy named Abe? Ibin? who lives in California. He wants to tour the US before returning to Japan in the end of December, back to his parents and kid sister. He used to pole vault (the thought of it is so spontaneous that at first Ash thinks Eiji is fucking with him) until an ominous “accident” occurred (Eiji refuses to say anymore) and he couldn’t. “I was so sure of my dream,” He said, fingering the strap of his camera. “And then I wasn’t. It was terrifying.”

Eiji thinks everything happens for a reason. He says it gives him something to think about.

He wants to have his pictures feature in the Reader’s Digest and live in New York City.

He likes his hot chocolate with espresso.

 

It’s so fucking cliché. Not the boring kind, the too-good-to-be-true kind. Ash has learned they’re sometimes not the same thing.

But Ash also learned the hard way that the sand in time's hourglass is abrasive. It wears the novelty of dreamlike infatuation away into the grit of everyday love.

So Ash limits the conversation to bits and pieces. There's harm in getting too attached.

He knows that there is no such thing as real love, only a life of arguments, misunderstandings, and regrets. His mother had loved once, a social butterfly caught in a web of romanticism and cheap wine. When that fairytale enchantment transformed the weight of an arm around her shoulders to the unbearable weight of a child, she was already done for. His mother, the last woman Ash loved and maybe still loves, who went out for groceries one night, hitched a ride on the interstate, never looked back.

Ash doesn’t blame her anymore, not for leaving. From how Jim treated her, it was the least damage she could have done. Because it wasn’t the abuse or stress from Jim that made his mother go away. It was love: that sinful, guilty love that undermined every rational decision. Five-year-old Ash swore never to love again.

 

…Still.

 

Eiji’s affection is guileless. Reverent, more like.

Like his love wouldn’t feel like dancing in the dark, kisses that stain like bloody handprints, the slide of twenty bucks across a beer-littered table. When Eiji talks about Japan, his parents, his camera, it’s something sacred. Untainted. Something so vast and deeply rooted that it’s more religion than affection. His devotion would feel like bowed heads on folded knees, clean hands and cleansed fingers clasped in prayer, silent whispers in the break of dawn.

Eiji doesn’t believe in a god, but he would worship the people he loves.

Ash doesn’t believe in a god, but he’s a hypocrite. On the worst nights, he tries praying, but Ash could never ever find the courage to step on holy ground. He grew up accustomed to slipping sin under the carpet, or underneath the tongue like an intoxicating drug.

To Aslan Jade Callenrease, love is undeserving. But he’d never deserve whatever Eiji had to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's me! I was in a bit of a writer's block so I settled for Ash's stream of consciousness on his 'first night' with Eiji huhu.  
> As always, tell me if you liked, hated, tolerated this chapter. It's much appreciated.


	5. Supercut (Lorde)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of Banana Fish retold (more or less competently) through the lense of two lost souls on their journey from Cape Cod, New England to Los Angeles, California. Aslan Jade Callenrease, a self-established vigilante with a thirst for freedom, catches a ride on Interstate 80 as a result of some...extenuating circumstances.  
> One of those circumstances being Okamura Eiji, the epitome of a freelance photographer and the very definition of wanderlust, old enough to break away from his status quo and young enough to try.  
> When two separate worlds collide, one can only hope their journey is homeward bound.  
> After all, home is where the heart is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So I fall  
> Into continents and cars  
> All the stages and the stars  
> I turn all of it  
> To just a supercut."  
> Lorde, Supercut

They’re still talking when the morning comes; melting into oranges and yellows until suddenly it’s like the entire sky is aflame.

Eiji brings the Polaroid to his eyes for the umpteenth time, holding his breath. Ash thinks he might take a shot at the sun rising above the tree line, but instead he snaps a picture of Ash’s bust-up red Converses against the dirty white of the empty gas station stalls. He doesn’t notice Ash flinch when their knees brush, or at least pretends not to, and clasps the film between two fingers. Eiji shakes it with practiced precision, a deft flick of the wrist.

“Christopher,” Eiji stumbles over the name, endearing. He scoots closer, handing off the photo, and Ash feels his warmth through the sliver of space between them. Eiji is deceptively observant to leave a space. He must have noticed after all. “Looks okay, yeah?”

A bit of Ash’s hand is caught in the corner of the frame, covering the rip in his jeans (it’s fucking cold, okay? Give him a break) as he crouches. A tuft of blonde hair in the top-left, the Technicolor blur of cars on the highway behind the Gas n Go. Other than that, it’s a pair of red shoes and a gas station. This is what Eiji spent hours agonizing over?

“I don’t get it,” He admits, passing the film back, careful to hold it the same way Eiji does. Don’t leave any fingerprints. “It’s just a pair of shoes.”

The older boy laughs, a little somber. “That is true. My…” He fumbles for the word. “…landscapes always lack. I need to practice more.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Ash responds. “I think it, uh. I think it looks… good.” He finishes lamely.

Eiji grins at him. “Then thank you, Christopher.”

The first rays of sunlight peak over the tree line, turning every bit of Eiji’s skin golden. Ash turns away from the glow of the sunlight and Eiji’s smile –

\- And his gaze lands on six dark silhouettes leaned against the trunk of a pick-up too well kept to be Max’s, at the very edge of the parking lot. A glint in the brightening sunlight from one of their closed fists. Brass knuckles.

The realization hits him like a fucking car.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” He’s up in the next second, automatically reaching for the switchblade in his waistband, thoughts swirling through his head—this isn’t fair, the timing isn’t fair, it’s not fucking fair. Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur starts walking towards them. “I gotta go.”

Eiji scrambles to his feet next to him, slipping the photo into a pocket. “What’s going on?” He looks down at the photo. He follows Ash’s gaze, squints at the approaching figure, not sensing the tension that hangs in the air. Of course he isn’t. “Do you know these people?”

Somewhere between the warning sirens going off in Ash’s brain, he wonders what he wouldn’t give to be that naïve. Resentment boils in his stomach, ugly and familiar.

There’s a moment of silence where Eiji just. Stares at him. And then,

“…I see what is going on.” His eyes clear with understanding. “Do not be afraid.” For a moment, Ash is taken aback by the look of determination on the boy’s face, not an ounce of fear despite the danger they’re in.

Until Eiji continues, “It’s okay. I am scared to talk to classmates, too.” And Ash realizes, a few seconds too late, that Eiji couldn’t have been more wrong about reading the situation.

To his utmost terror, Eiji cups his hands and yells, “HELLO. CHRISTOPHER WANTS TO MEET YOU VERY MU—“ Ash clamps a hand over his mouth before he can finish, but the damage is already done.

“Well, now.” Arthur has separated himself from the group and stops walking five feet away from them. He pinches the cigarette in his mouth with two stubby fingers, throws it to the ground, and snuffs it with a steel-toed boot. “Who tha fuck is this, Ash?”

They’re a good few hours from New York but Frederick Arthur does his best emulate his folks, some low-life gang in Manhattan. Ash doesn’t remember how the twenty-something sleaze started hating him, but Arthur had bullied Griffin when they were younger and now there’s a scar running over his fingers where brass wraps around the knuckles. Ash’s veins sing with anxiety when he sees him—go figure, Arthur never fights fair—but he forces himself to loosen up, stay poised.

“Why do you want to know, Arthur?” He grins, slipping the switchblade into his sleeves. “I’m sure you and I have enough catching up to do.”

“Who’s Ash?” Eiji juts in, not in the slightest bit scared, but rather profoundly confused. It’s so unbelievable that Ash almost wants to laugh.

Then Arthur’s eyes flit from Ash to Eiji, gears working in his head, and his stomach drops.

“Aww.” Arthur steps closer. “Look it this cutie.” A smile spreads across his face, ugly as sin. “You know, Ash, I been looking all over for you last night. After what you did to Cole I felt like really, really—“

“Calm down, sweetie.” Ash smiles coyly and takes a step to the left, hoping Arthur takes his bait. He needs to move their range to the parking lot. Away from Eiji. “All night? I’m flattered, but that shit’ll cost you.”

Beside him, Eiji flushes red to the tips of his ears.

For a second, Arthur looks like he could lunge at Ash. Then he stops, calms himself, and flashes a smile that’s twice as grotesque. “In your dreams, dollface. Thing is, I was in the mood to rough some bitches up, ya know? I found your pal Shorter at Victoria’s…” Ash stiffens. Arthur couldn’t have the balls to take Shorter and his guys. He just wants a fight. Ash knows he’d lose against six guys, and so does Arthur. Ash curls his hands into fists tight until his nails break skin.

Stay. Calm.

“But then, I heard from Barbara that you were chumming it up with some rando…” Arthur’s focus drifts to Eiji, jeering. “This one’s new, though. Kinda young for you, don’tcha think?”

They both know what he means and Ash feels a livid chill run through his veins, itching to wrap his hands around Arthur’s neck and squeeze.

Stay. Fucking. Calm.

“I figure, runs in the family, ya know. Money is money, no matter how you make the rounds.”

 

Fuck staying calm.

Before the words leave Arthur’s mouth, Ash is kicking his knees out, pushing his cheek into the asphalt and unloading punch after punch into his face. It’s like tunnel vision: he barely hears Arthur’s friends yelling as they run to close the distance, barely feels it when someone’s hands are hooking under his shoulders and yanking him up, up, away from the mess of red already blooming from Arthur’s face.

He can barely register the slapping of sneakers on the ground as his own, when Eiji’s hand clamps around his own bloodied wrist as they’re pounding down the main street anywhere but the Gas n Go. There’s a cruel sense of déjà vu as him and Eiji chase the pavement back to Johnny’s, back to his shithole town, into the grit of everyday love.

 

He keeps running.

The men are not even fifty feet behind them when Eiji slows to a stop beside a dusty ass Toyota. “Chris—Hey, hey wait. This is my car.” For a moment, Eiji glances back to Ash, brown eyes meeting green. A silent understanding passes between him.

Then all he needs to say is “Get in.” before Ash lunges into the passenger seat, slamming and locking the door in one fluid motion.

Arthur’s goons get within window-smashing distance. Ash feels his heart leap up to his throat. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Eiji hurry up.”

Eiji fumbles with his keys, hands shaking. “I-I’m trying.”

There’s the pierce of glass shattering in the left rear window as one of them tries to muscle his way in. “Don’t look back,” Ash warns. He turns around in the passenger seat, releases the seat adjustment lock, and kicks. The headrest slams into the guy’s head and he snaps back out of the car with a sickening crack. He turns back around in his seat just in time for the second guy to wrench at the passenger door. “Eiji, if you don’t start the fucking car—”

The timing is perfect.

Eiji floors the gas and they’re gone, speeding down the long stretch of country road into town. Ash whoops and punches the air a few times because what the hell, no one gets that close to Arthur without being busted up. When he calms a bit, he rolls down the window and waves back at Arthur and his men. Then he flips them off.

Eiji watches them disappear in his rearview mirror, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He looks shaken, like he hasn’t breathed since they got into the car. Guilt rises inside Ash almost immediately.

“Are you okay?” He asks.

The boy shakes a little still, anything but. But he loosens his grip on the wheel. He takes a slow breath. Then another. “Not really.”

“Are you scared?” Of knives and fights? He wants to add. Of Arthur? “Of me?” Shit, did he say that aloud?

First, Eiji looks surprised at the question. Then, sunlight spills onto the dashboard as Eiji rolls his window down too, breaths in the cold fresh air. Turns to Ash. Smiles with his teeth.

“Never.”

 

Bits and pieces swim together, like the blurred edges of Eiji’s Polaroid picture, blur of Technicolor cars on Interstate 80. And Ash gets…the strangest feeling. Like he might look back in a few years and recognize this as the biggest decision in his life. Like maybe he’ll regret pulling Eiji into his mess on a piece of sidewalk in the early morning, a perfect stranger who he felt more inexplicably connected to than anyone else.

Like maybe, maybe Ash might think he made Eiji up, a blurry picture, a coping mechanism.

Or maybe, he thinks, focusing on Eiji’s hair flare out like an ink-black halo behind him as he merges onto I-80, engine roaring under their feet.

 

Maybe that’s just what everything was before now.

Blurred pictures, faded lines.

 

 

                At the asscrack of dawn, Aslan Jade Callenrease wonders if karma made his life take on screaming color.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that! I hope this chapter isn't riddled with grammatical mistakes haha. And comments are always, always appreciated.


	6. Harbor (Tomppabeats)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji contemplates the past day's events from a different lense.

Okamura Eiji loves America.

He really does. He loves the ice cream, the New York Times, the vast blue sky that makes every picture one thousand times more beautiful.

Okamura Eiji thinks of such things to calm himself as he stares desolately at the chalkboard fast food menu. It’s a good fifteen feet away and the tiny English characters swim together like alphabet soup (He had tried the snack food in an American grocery store in New Jersey, and subsequently hated it.) Trying not to squint, Eiji spends a few moments attempting to decipher the chalky handwriting before referring to the pictures for his order. It does not help. He repeats the consolation over and over in his head like a mantra: Okamura Eiji loves America, Okamura Eiji loves America, Okamura Eiji loves Ameri—

“Come on,” Someone groans from the line forming behind Eiji. He sniffs, feeling infinitesimally smaller. Despite all their smiling, American people can be very mean. “We don’t got all day, kid.”

“We’ll have two number nine’s with fries and a Coke,” Comes a reply from next to him. Eiji does not need to turn away from the menu to know whose voice it is, but he does anyway. Watching him carefully, cautiously, is the American whose name Eiji longer knows.

“That’ll be $10.20.” The cashier quips. He speaks so fast his sentence sounds like one indistinguishable word. Eiji fumbles for his wallet and is greeted with a gloomy one-dollar bill. He wants nothing more than to sink into the ground right there.

“It’s fast food for a reason, hon.” A woman’s snicker behind Eiji, laced with a Southern accent so strong he can barely translate.

Eiji laughs too, then, to try for good humor. “Sorry for the wait.” It’s a phrase he can say fluently now, from how many times he’s used it.

The American boy silences her with a glare sharp enough to cut. He slaps a few notes on the counter. Then, to the cashier, “Keep the change.”

“Who’s it for?”

“Ash.” He says it offhandedly.

Eiji feels the urge to retort something like “Oh, so it’s Ash now?” but he swallows it down, truly thankful for the American’s intervention. Instead, he says, “You sit somewhere.” He tries for a convincing smile. “I can handle waiting for food.”

For a split second, the boy lingers, like he is concerned. Then he turns and ducks into a booth on the other end of the fast food restaurant without a second glance back, and Eiji thinks he imagined the gesture.

 

Ash.

That’s the same name the older man, Arthur, had called him earlier. As for the rest of what happened earlier…Eiji still does not know how to process his morning at Cape Cod.

“Are you scared?” He had asked Eiji in the car on the way here. Pursed his lips as if he was scared of Eiji’s answer, and it made Eiji realize he was still only seventeen. He was just a boy, like Eiji.

The same boy whose punches flew so fast that Arthur didn’t even get time to scream.

 

Eiji’s first instinct had been to close his eyes. He could never stand the sight of blood as a child; he still can’t. It takes him back months to the incident that brought him to America in the first place.

The fall.

Eiji doesn’t remember most of it himself, just the swish of wind in his ears and then that horrible, gut-wrenching moment when he hits concrete instead of foam matting. The bright tang of blood in his mouth where he bit down on his tongue. The warm stickiness where he lay in a pool of it. The feeling of his nervous system shutting down; darkness surrounding him even all he can move his neck to see is the blue of the sky. Eiji knew there was nothing that could have salvaged his fractured leg, but his parents took him to the hospital anyway.

The next several days are a mess of bloody bandages, physical therapy, and the taste of salt on his cheeks. It’s because when Eiji’s foot shattered, his dream shattered with it. The following weeks in physical therapy are a haze of gray afternoons and antidepressants. It’s like the story of Icarus, plunged into the ocean because he flew too close to the sun. Eiji spends entire days in bed, sluggish, sinking into the depths of water so blue it turns black.

He met Ibe in the summer.

At first, it was a photoshoot Ibe wanted from him, and then long discussions about Eiji’s life. Ibe asked him once, to describe what it felt like to lose a dream. Eiji asked him to describe blue.

Then came the introduction to a newfound ambition. Ibe taught Eiji to live on the other side of the lens, capturing motion, chasing the highs he used to be able to feel. He gave Eiji his first camera.

Still, the regret of giving up his biggest dream lingered in Eiji’s mind with every whispering breeze.

The day Ibe’s picture of The Jumper featured on television in its raw color was three months back from today. Eiji still can’t bear to look at it, but in some twisted way he’s thankful to the injury for bringing him photography and America. Eiji loves every little thing about America: the dirty cities and people with dirtier language, the picturesque mountains and smoky coal plants, the glory and the gore.

So when the American boy flung himself at Arthur, every bit rippling anger and fluid motion, Eiji did not close his eyes. He was not scared.

The swish of wind past his ears when he pulled Ash/Christopher to his feet to flee from whoever those men were was not supposed to feel as exhilarating as it did. Eiji felt a little bit hysterics, a little inspired, a lot like a brand new person.

Even still. The night before, the boy had been thoughtful, considerate, and close enough to be the first friend Eiji made in America. Now, in the bright morning sunlight, it seemed like a distant dream compared to their recent actions. In the course of an hour, this stranger severely injured a man twice their age and size, ran away, and then beat up two of the friends who had gone after him.

And Eiji helped him do it.

All while not even knowing his real name.

 

 

 

God. Bless. America.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you always for the support! Any feedback is appreciated. :)


	7. World Alone (Lorde)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The build-up to Eiji's big question. The story will pick up after this, be prepared!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All the double-edged people and schemes  
> They make a mess then go home and get clean  
> You're my best friend, and we're dancing in a world alone,  
> We're all alone  
> We're all alone."  
> Lorde, A World Alone

 

Eiji brings the food to their booth thankfully without incident. He slides into the seat across from the American boy a bit unceremoniously, accidentally knocking their knees together. “Ah, sorry.”

Christopher--or Ash, Eiji doesn't even know anymore--stares at him for a moment. “Is it you or Japan?”

Homesickness blooms in his chest at the mention of Japan, but Eiji smothers it down. “What do you mean?”

“Apologizing all the time.” The blond runs a hand through his hair and Eiji catches the glimpse of split skin over his knuckles, the back of his hand riddled with faded scars. “Is that your fault or Japan’s?”

Eiji has never seen green eyes in person.

When they lift to meet his own, it reminds him of sea glass, shattered and glittering in the sunlight on the Izumo beaches. Walking the seemingly endless stretch of shoreline as a child and nicking his feet on the sharp, beautiful pieces of glass. He and Eiji bear no resemblance to each other and yet…every part of the boy makes Eiji feel…something familiar but not, something he can’t really describe. Closeness. Nostalgia.

“Maybe both,” Eiji confesses, unwrapping one sandwich and nudging the other across the table to him.

“Maybe,” He echoes, studying Eiji carefully. He breaks gaze to take a bite of the burger, then another, then another. Then, “You don’t have to apologize all the time. These people aren’t worth your respect.”

Maybe he feels familiar… maybe he feels irrationally close because he reminds Eiji of himself in a younger, sadder time. It reminds him of having built so many walls around himself that he couldn’t tell what he was hiding from anymore. Trusting no one and collapsing under the burden of he created for himself, becoming numb.

“Can I say some things, then?” Eiji asks. “Your name is not Christopher, no?”

The boy eyes Eiji wearily. “…Why do you care?”

The question shouldn’t steal Eiji’s breath, but it does. “It was—I-I thought…”

Eiji never finishes that sentence. He doesn’t have the courage to tell the boy he regarded him as more than a short acquaintance. Eiji resolves to staring at their car out the window of the restaurant, wondering why he even bothered inviting the boy to breakfast.

After a silence that seems to go on forever, the boy sighs, softening. “My name is Ash.”

“Ash.”

“Not like that. It’s not supposed to sound like a sneeze. Ash.”

“Ash. Ash, Ash.” Ash is a pretty name, Eiji thinks. He doesn't dare say it out loud. "Ash?"

“...Yeah, you said it right,” Ash takes a resigned sip of the soda, now unwilling to meet Eiji’s eyes. “It’s better off if you didn’t know my name.”

“Why not?”

“The cashier from this morning knew my name, and look where that got us.”

This morning. A young woman who would not take his credit card. Among the other events of the morning, it seems like a minor incident. Eiji asks the question burning in his mind. “Why were those men after you?”

Ash looks at him and all he can see is sea glass. Sharp and bright. “See, I can’t tell you that.”

Then, seeing Eiji’s reaction, “Relax, I’m not a criminal.”

“What are you going to do?”  
Ash pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just… need to lay low for a few days and it’ll blow over.”

 

It’s late in the morning now. Somewhere, Eiji knows it’s unreasonable to keep in touch with a stranger, someone in America at that. But sitting here with him, sharing names and a table, it’s almost like…like they’re longtime friends.

Slowly, bits and pieces drift together. Eiji’s numbness, his loneliness needed a change of scene. Ash can’t safely stay in his hometown. A plan starts to unfold in his head, and it makes terrifying sense.

Eiji makes the bold decision. “Ash.”

“I told you you're pronouncing it right, Eiji.”

"No, I have something else to say."

Sea glass in his eyes, a weary gaze. "Fine, go ahead."

He needs a change of scene for maybe a few days. Eiji needs a friend, for maybe a bit longer. It fits together. When Eiji speaks, his voice is clear as the blue American sky.

“Ash, come with me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woahh, two chapters in one day? Crazy. Anyway, I'll have more time to work on this hopefully with summer starting. Stay tuned! As always, feedback is always my favorite thing to look forward to.


	8. Superboy Supergirl (Tullycraft)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji and Ash leave Cape Cod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Superboy's got his problems,  
> And Girl's got her hang-ups  
> And I know that it can't be easy to be  
> Superboy in a messed up world, these days  
> Or a Supergirl in a thankless world, these days"  
> Tullycraft, The End of the F***ing World

“Ash, come with me.”

The words replay in Eiji’s head, ringing in his ears to fill the yawning chasm of silence between him and Ash. His spark of confidence has left as quickly and abruptly as it came, so Eiji resorts to screaming inwardly as the boy across him takes another torturously slow bite of his burger and sets it down, chewing thoughtfully.

The panic seeps into Eiji’s blood like a slow poison, and he rambles. So much for not stammering. “Not—not forever, of course. Maybe for a few days, you know? Until those men get tired of being angry, we can get out of here and, like—like you said, lay low.”

“You know what?” Ash almost, almost smiles at him. Then he narrows his eyes and says, “That sounds exactly like what a serial killer would say.”

“I’m not—“ Eiji’s face starts to burn, and suddenly the burger doesn’t sit so well in his stomach. “You’re right, it sounds very crazy. I just—” _don’t want to say goodbye._

Ash raises a blond eyebrow, jaw set. “You just?”

This isn’t working. Eiji needs to find some rational reason, any other reason to be with Ash and not seem like a creep. So he just blurts, “I need someone to help me get to California.”

 

Well, at least it’s not a lie.

Ash just. Stares.

“…What?” He finally asks, incredulous. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Eiji doesn’t really know from where he got the courage to say it either, but he takes the leap of faith and goes on. “Ash, please listen. You—I have no way of understanding your life from yesterday, but this Cape Cod is not good for you. I had…in a way I had my own kind of Cape Cod back in Japan, and I felt like every day my life was stolen from me.” Eiji stops and takes a breath, gauging Ash’s reaction. Thankfully, the boy meets his gaze, silently prompting Eiji to go on.

“All I’m saying is the world is larger than we allow ourselves to think. And I am not so good at written English, as you may know. So if we go see America for a few days, it will not hurt anyone, no?”

Both of Ash’s eyebrows are raised now. Eiji can’t blame him.

“I know it’s crazy.” Eiji’s hoping for a miracle and he knows it. “But you can leave anytime you want. Just, take a chance. Please?”

When Ash does speak again, it is deliberately slow. “Let me get this straight. You need me to be your American guide. To help you take a road trip across the fucking country. And this is all because, what, I’m not safe in my home town?”

“I can’t read English signs fast enough,” Eiji says in defense. After a few more seconds of unconvinced silence, he adds, “I think I drove on the left side of the road the whole way here from New Jersey.”

“Eiji,” Ash says his name in that beguiling American accent, the corner of his mouth turning up. “You’re fucking insane.”

It’s probably the best backhanded compliment Eiji has ever received and he feels like a brand new version of himself. He grins back.

Many things happen in the next second. Ash stuffs a French fry into his mouth before grabbing his soda and sliding out of the booth with deadly grace. He’s at the door before Eiji can compose himself, already tapping a foot. “When do you have to be in California?”

Eiji walks out into the blinding sunlight next to him. He can’t bear saying goodbyes to Ash already, it’s happening too quickly. “Ibe’s expecting me in a week.” He holds his breath, stifles his hope, “So you are not coming, then? With me?”

“Of course not,” Ash rolls his eyes and uncaps his soda, chucking the rest of the liquid at the side of Eiji’s car to rinse off the blood from the man earlier that morning. “I’m going to California with Ronald goddamn Reagan.” He smirks, seeing Eiji’s reaction. “Unlock your car, Eiji. I’m riding shotgun.”

Sarcasm or not, it takes all of Eiji’s willpower not to spontaneously combust. He fumbles with his keys, heart racing. “Right, okay. Do you want to stop by anywhere before we go? Like for packing or family or something?”

“Let’s just go.” Ash’s expression darkens a little, almost imperceptibly. “It's like you said. There’s nothing left for me here.”

Eiji figures he can’t disagree with that, so he instead gets in the car, puts the key in ignition, and watches Ash watch Cape Cod fade into the horizon behind them.

 

Thinking back, he probably should have said something as they merged onto I-80 westbound. One could say they had less time in each day, driving in the direction of the sinking sun. Eiji wishes he had more time to ask Ash if he really wanted to leave, if he really had no doubts, if he was scared.

 

They really should have been scared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that! I wanted to dedicate this chapter to the song by Tullycraft because that's what plays when James and Alyssa run away in The End of the F***ing World, a show that is a major inspiration for me. Go check it out! If you like this kind of a story you would love it.  
> Thank you all for your amazing comments and support! You guys are the best, seriously.


	9. Ribs (Lorde)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shorter and Yut-Lung realize Ash is in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You're the only friend I need  
> Sharing beds like little kids  
> Laughing 'til our ribs get tough  
> But that will never be enough."  
> Lorde, Ribs

Shorter had never experienced rock bottom quite like when he nearly choked on his drool and woke up hungover in someone else’s bathroom.

Well, that wasn’t even the bad part. Shorter was used to waking up Saturday mornings crashed into the most random places the morning after a party. The bad part was when Shorter caught his reflection in the full-length mirror in Lisa Grubel’s bathroom and found someone had not only drawn all manners of inappropriate genitalia on his face but also given him a Mohawk in his sleep.

                A fucking Mohawk. Really, Shorter would have preferred any other haircut--Hell, even a shaved head. But a Mohawk? That was just low.

Needless to say, the other kids that slept over at Lisa’s place that morning must have had a very abrupt awakening when Shorter unleashed a scream full of raw pain and anguish before promptly passing out again.

 

When Shorter wakes up again to the sight of a slim Chinese perched on the bathroom sink, long hair swishing behind him like a cat’s tail, Shorter’s realizes his morning is about to go from bad to worse. “Hell.” He says in disbelief, leaning his head back against the bathtub faucet to stare at the ceiling. “I must be in Hell.”

“Relax, moron, it’s not that bad,” Yut-Lung slips off the sink with the poise of a ballet dancer. Or a snake. Each of his movements are deceptively suave, purposeful.

Shorter tries to lift his head and immediately regrets it, his skull throbbing with a headache as loud as a heartbeat. He blinks up blearily, wishing he hadn’t drank as much last night. “What, the bathtub?” He points to the reflection of his hair. "Or this?"

“Hmm, both,” Yut-Lung hums, crouching down to pick up a strand of Shorter’s Mohawk and let it fall. “At least it'll distract people from your face.” He smiles coyly. “As for the bathtub... well, you’re going to need to sit down for this news anyway.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Shorter massages his temples, coaxing the headache away. “Please don’t try to talk to me now. Let me properly mourn my hair.” He puts his head in his heads, the hangover making everything too loud and bright. “Nonconsensual haircuts should be a crime.”

“Oh, please,” Yut-Lung scoffs. “Shorter, grow the fuck up and listen. Arthur came by here last night.”

“What the hell? Why?” Shorter takes his head out to give the other boy an incredulous look. “He’s, uh, he’s not really a party guy, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course not, dumbass. He came looking for Ash.”

“Ohhhhh. Fuck. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.” Shorter’s headache comes back with renewed vengeance. “I TOLD him not to get involved with Cole and Lisa. I specifically told him, ‘Lisa Gruber’s petty cash is not worth your life and first born child, so don’t mess with Arthur.’ And what does he do? Cocky little son of a—“

“Either way, you need to find him,” Yut-Lung inspects his nails. "I heard he's in for it big this time."

If Shorter didn’t know any better, it would look like Yut-Lung couldn’t care less, but interestingly he's always had a soft spot for the kid. Besides, who doesn’t love an underdog?

Ash Lynx was Cape Cod’s very own Dirty Harry, a force to be reckoned with and the only person Shorter knows who was every bit as dangerous as his rumors. At only seventeen, he had racked up a considerable number of misdemeanors for surprisingly noble reasons; Shorter has known him for years, but even he doesn’t know where the list ends. Still, if someone needed justice the law couldn’t give like beating up an alcoholic father with a two-by-four or breaking a school bully’s legs, Ash was their guy. He was iconic; a hero to some, the worst nightmare to many others, and a friend to no one.

Well, except Shorter. He had heard rumors about Ash long before he met him in juvie when they were kids, so when he tried to strike up a friendship he didn’t really have high expectations. Nevertheless, when they got closer and Ash opened up to him, Shorter realized there really wasn’t a sociopath or the devil’s incarnate under his tough-guy exterior. Just a broken, dysfunctional kid.

In all his life, Shorter only saw Ash smile once; when he did the one time after he said goodbye when Shorter left juvie, it was downright angelic. Sad childhoods weren’t necessarily a rare occurrence in juvie, but it still breaks Shorter’s heart that Ash had some horrifying shit in his past and smiling was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He was too young to handle Ash’s demons as a kid, but Shorter’s tried to be better about it. He tries to be a friend Ash can crack jokes with, give him more reasons to laugh. He helps Ash out on the less bloody jobs and keeps him out of trouble after the more bloody ones.

That’s why the thought of Ash and Arthur butting heads sends a chill down his spine.

“Shorter Wong. Are you listening to me?” Yut-Lung’s voice scatters Shorter’s thoughts.

“Yesss.” Shorter smiles sheepishly. "But just in case, could you run that by me again?"

“I was saying, Arthur and his goons came back last night to rough you up and I had to stuff your sorry drunk ass in this bathroom before things got too bad,” Yut-Lung glares at him, nostrils flaring. “You’re lucky you got off with a haircut instead of full-on decapitation.”

“THAT BITCH CUT MY HAIR?”

“That’s the spirit,” Yut-Lung stands. “You know what this means, right?”

“That scum is going to roast in Hell for laying a finger on my head,” Shorter slams a fist down on the rim of the bathtub, seething.

Yut-Lung pinches the bridge of his nose. “I swear I lose brain cells talking to you. More importantly, we need to find Ash before Arthur does.”

“You're right, but I’m still getting my revenge.”

He sighs. “Fine.”

Shorter closes his eyes one last time before hoisting his aching body out of the bathtub. So far, it’s been a horrible morning, but he can work with it. Most of all, he needs to be there for his friend.

Shorter winks at his reflection, much to Yut-Lung’s disgust, and moves to the door.

 

“Let’s go get our Lynx.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, what are Shorter and Yut-Lung going to do next? 
> 
> So this takes place--you guessed it--the morning after Ash leaves with Eiji. If you remember that exchange between Arthur and Ash, he mentions going to see Shorter and I wanted to delve into that a bit more. 
> 
> I'm going to start slowly adding different characters to the story, so please leave a comment on who you'd like to see next!  
> And as always, thanks for reading.


	10. Plastic Love (Mariya Takeuchi)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven Days from California: Ash and Eiji makes the first stretch of their journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "When I fall asleep on the highway  
> Only the halogen lights shine mysteriously  
> Even if a voice whispers out that  
> I’m a woman cold as ice  
> Don’t worry!
> 
> I'm just playing games  
> I know that's plastic love  
> Dance to the plastic beat  
> Another morning comes..."  
> Mariya Takeuchi, Plastic Love

 

“This radio is shit,” Ash says for maybe the thirtieth time in the last two hours.

Eiji agrees, but he taps along to the rhythm on the steering wheel nevertheless. “Is American music normally this grinding on the ears?”

“For sure, all the time,” Ash kicks his shoes up onto the dashboard, tuning for a different station. “But usually it’s a good thing with Guns N’ Roses or Bon Jovi. It’s just the incessant reruns of Hangin’ Tough that make me want to blow my brains out.”

That makes Eiji laugh. “All this freedom in America and the radio selection restricts your music choice.”

Ash gives him a crooked smile. “You said it.”

Ash agreed to come with him. Ash agreed to come with him and they are driving together to California. It feels like a dream.

While they drive, Ash tries to teach Eiji more English words and phrases. Eiji thinks he might be a biased teacher, however.

“If you ever meet someone here who uses the phrase ‘Like, barf me out’ unironically, I’m giving you permission to turn around and run the other way,” Ash had said, about an hour into the drive.

“Unironically?”

“It means not in a mocking way.”

“Ah, okay,” Eiji glanced away from the road for a second at Ash, who licked his finger before turning a page in the map of interstates in America. “What’s the harm? It’s an iconic American phrase.”

“It’s part of the reason why Americans look stupid,” Ash set the map aside. He had an unconscious habit of using his hands to talk about something he’s invested in, and Eiji found it charming. “Do you ever hear a phrase, and you’re like, ‘Wow that is going to sound so stupid in ten years’?” He gestured around him. “How much of 1987 are people going to remember in a few decades? If they remember ‘barf me out,’ they’ll think the stupid phrase represents all of America in 1987.”

“I guess we’ll just have to educate them when we grow a few decades older,” Eiji smiled. “Besides, I don’t think Americans look stupid.”

Ash smirked, watching trees fly past the window. “You haven’t seen enough of them yet.” His statement was solemn, like there’s more he would have said, but cut it short.

“I don’t think you look stupid,” Eiji went on. “What if a few decades pass and the only American I remember is you?”

Ash turned back, expression unreadable. “You’d remember me in a few decades?”

“I won’t forget the man I drove all the way across the United States with.” Eiji flushed, the statement holding more weight than he intended.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Ash said, after an embarrassingly long pause.

“’Ahead of yourself?’”

“It means don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Oh. _Oh._ ”

 

It goes on like that.

Eiji likes the way Ash talks, all sarcasm and witty humor, like he says the first thought on his mind and he could care less how people react. It’s different from Japan, where people duck their heads, emphasize etiquette and never really mean what they say. Ash is the only person who doesn’t speak English patronizingly slow to Eiji, and it makes him feel less like a foreigner and more like a friend.

They’ve been on the road for hours now, leaving seaside and rolling green hills for mountains now. Ash has a stack of maps they picked up at a rest stop a while ago, along with a few brochures of parks or museums that branch off the highway. When Eiji asked him about it, Ash replied with, “The United States are fucking huge and if we red-eye the entire drive you’re going to be brain dead.”

Now the American hunches over the car radio, sorting through stations with incredible concentration. Eiji gets an idea.

“Hey Ash?” Two green eyes look at him.

“Yeah?”

“Do you like Japanese music?”

“…I’ve never heard it,” Ash replies.

“I, uh,” Eiji starts. “I have a cassette that my sister gave me before I came here in the back, if I can find it. Do you want to try listening?”

“Anything but this garbage,” Ash clicks the volume off with great enthusiasm. He unbuckles his seatbelt and twists to the back, his breath grazing Eiji’s ear. “Where is it?”

“I-It’s in a black backpack,” Eiji stutters, trying to focus on the road.

Thankfully, Ash turns back around before long, sorting through the backpack. “You’ve got a lot of English books in here. ‘A Perfect Day for Banana Fish?’” He quirks an eyebrow at Eiji. “A bit ambitious for a new learner, are we?”

Eiji tries to snatch the bag back with his right hand, face burning.

“Jeez, focus on the road, Eiji. Do you want us to crash?” Ash pulls the bag away, laughing.

Eiji stops everything for a second. That laugh is so uncharacteristically soft for the rough, battle-scarred aura Ash has around him; it’s higher than his actual voice, and it shows off Ash’s perfectly straight, white teeth. It’s beautiful.

Ash takes out a cassette, inspecting the cover. “Mariya… Takeuchi?”

“Take-uchi,” Eiji sounds out for him. “She’s my sister’s favorite.” He glances at Ash, reddening. “Not mine. I’m more of a… punk rock type person.” That’s a lie. He loves Mariya Takeuchi and has probably listened and cried to the songs of this album more times than he can count on one hand.

“Of course you are.” Ash gives him an amused almost-smile. Eiji calls them almost-smiles because Ash doesn’t let his mouth smile but his eyes do. It’s another one of his quirks, Eiji has learned.

Ash pushes the cassette into the slot on the car and presses a few buttons. Almost immediately after Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love starts to croon from the speakers, Eiji gets chills.

It fills him with the feeling of being back home in his living room, doing homework while his mom hummed along with the song on the radio in the kitchen. Eiko next to him, working on a crossword while the smell of dinner filled the house. Despite it all, despite everything, Eiji feels homesickness engulf him.

Eiji doesn’t realize he’s been singing under his breath until he notices Ash watching him, transfixed. Eiji promptly shuts his mouth, inciting another gorgeous laugh from the blond.

“Punk rock fan, my ass,” Ash snickers. The midday sun beats down on them, turning his hair into strands of gold.

“What do you think of it, then?” Eiji asks. “Mr. Bon Jovi?”

“It’s…nice,” Ash says, his eyes not leaving Eiji. “It’s very warm and sunshine-y.” His expression changes. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen, but not…not necessarily worse. Better. I think.”

“Wow,” Eiji breathes. “You like Mariya Takeuchi that much?”

Ash blinks. “Yup.” He turns to face the road, fiddling with the corner of the map. “Definitely Mariya, fucking Takeuchi.”

The atmosphere turns weird. Eiji scrambles. “I like her too, actually. Me and my sister used to listen to her all the time.” He laughs. “My grandma would get tired of it eventually, but we never did.”

“Do you miss your family?” Ash asks.

Eiji hesitates, and immediately feels guilty for it. “Yes. I’m still glad I left.” He glances at Ash. “Do you miss yours?”

“No.” Ash’s bristles, his voice is lined with steel. He does not hesitate.

Eiji nods, not prodding further.

“She’s singing some English, isn’t she?” Ash says, turning the volume up. “’Plastic love?’ What does that mean?”

“Do you want the long explanation or the short one?” Eiji asks.

Ash grins. “We have plenty of time.”

“This is the story of a woman who cares for someone very, very deeply. But then that person leaves her for mater – materia…”

“Materialistic?”

“Yes, that. So, anyway that person leaves her for a Plastic Love, and she believes love can never be real, so she has meaningless relationships to achieve that same short-timed happiness. Then, she becomes the Plastic Lover for someone else. And the cycle goes on.”

“…Damn,” Ash says. “It sounded so happy.”

“Right?” Eiji smiles. “It’s very…versatile.”

It’s one of the words Ash taught him, and it makes him almost-smile. “That’s right.”

 

Miles tick by in comfortable silence as the album plays to the end. The combination of the afternoon sun and the music fills the car with drowsy warmth, and by the end of the album, Ash is curled up in the passenger seat, sound asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Starting from now, I'm thinking to release chapters every Tuesday so stay tuned!  
> As always, I live vicariously through your support and comments are always welcome.


	11. Dino (Banana Fish Original Soundtrack)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into the mind of our favorite least favorite villain, Papa Dino Golzine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "*that sick Dino beat*"  
> Banana Fish Original Soundtrack

One word.

That is all Papa Dino has to say.

When he says that word, it is only a matter of time until whatever unlucky fellow that decided to wrong him is dead.

To those who say Papa Dino is a heartless killer, well, he thinks they are poorly mistaken. He is a thoughtful killer. His targets’ existences are quietly, peacefully wiped from the world. Papa cares for his targets so much that they die in such a way that no one misses them. 

How can they be missed when after all, not very many of his targets’ loved ones are left alive after the job is done?

Regardless, it is a busy day when Papa Dino says the word. His order is passed down to his subordinates, their subordinates, and so on, along tendrils of the power with which he holds the world. The target’s name is passed along cells in the federal prison, written on slips of paper and traded with bags of cocaine in the cartels, whispered between dancers over roaring music in the discotheque. Each of them is a different race, color, gender, virtually impossible to track with the exception of the single black pendant hanging from each of their necks. A deadly reminder – and often the last thing the target sees – of the omnipresence of the Corsican mafia.

All he has to do is say that one, harmless word.

And when the grapevine grows, information is accumulated, and plans are made, Papa Dino sits back and watches the show. Drinks the wine. If the target is lucky, they die quickly. Otherwise, they spend the rest of their life wishing for death. It is quite fascinating, really, to examine what is left when the humanity is extracted from a human… but that is a project for another time.

When Frederick Arthur--one of Dino’s most loyal subordinates--is found dead with his skull crushed in on the outskirts of a tiny town in Cape Cod, Dino is not as furious as he is…intrigued. When he learns the circumstances of the cold-blooded killer responsible for the death of Arthur, his interest is peaked. Ash Lynx, a seventeen-year-old diamond in the rough, is capable of far more gruesome than his age. To Dino’s surprise, Arthur is not the boy’s first murder, and most certainly not his last.

For the first time in a long time, Dino feels something. Curiosity killed the cat, an old saying he remembered from some distant past, and he steels himself against it at first. Eventually, curiosity turns to obsession as he learns to cherish the feeling.

So Papa Dino gathers intel. He forms a plan. He does not say the word, not yet. Instead, he says several, the words twisting into a message that he passes on to the awaiting Corsican mafia:

  
  


“Bring the Ash Lynx to me, alive and undamaged. Kill the little friend.”

  
  


Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Dino is careful. From this moment on, the Lynx and his Siamese kitten are dead on their feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I couldn't really think of a song that represents Dino because although his character is fascinating, I think... I've created a monster. So any suggestions as to what songs might represent this sociopath are welcome!  
> Also, I might add another chapter before Tuesday because the creative juices are flowing :) stay tuned!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash and Eiji find out about Dino's order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "He could have laughed at how fucked up life was. That soon as you found something to live for, you found something to die for too. But he guessed in the end it was a good trade."  
> Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

Ash can’t breathe.

He feels his lungs straining for it, the blood in his veins singing for release, chest convulsing for air—

There’s a hand clamped over his mouth. He tries to move his arms, pry it off – but they’re pinned down to his side, with more hands. Fear swirls inside Ash’s gut, and he thrashes to no avail. There’s more of them than he can count; dirty fingers pressing his eyes shut, squeezing at his throat, fisted in his hair and pulling. His skin is slick and he can’t tell if it’s tears or sweat.

Ash screams, but every time he opens his mouth he feels a hand jamming down his throat, stifling his voice. Slowly, all his thoughts fade into white noise, drowned under the sound of blood rushing through his ears, the sound of his heartbeat getting slower. And slower. And slower.

Ash feels himself going numb. He can’t differentiate his own hands from the ones locked around his neck, scraping the skin on his calf, forcing his legs apart.

“ – sh –“

Ash struggles for a cohesive thought, but his mind is nothing but swirling, fragmented cries for help.

“Ash.”

He can’t. Fucking. Breathe.

He can’t. Breathe.

He can’t…

  
  


“Ash!”

He jolts awake, registering nothing but the feeling of a hand on his arm. Some kind of primal terror washes over him, and almost instinctively, he grabs it by the wrist and reaches for his switchblade with his other hand—

—before he realizes that wrist belongs to Eiji, leaning over him from outside the open passenger seat window, eyes wide in shock.

“ _ Shit _ . Shit, sorry. I c – I can’t—” Ash drops the knife, most of the memory from his nightmare leaving him in a shuddering breath. Most of it isn’t enough, though. Ash still feels the familiar soreness in his muscles from the nights where he lay tense, unable to close his eyes for the fear of opening and seeing nothing, feeling those dreaded hands all over him. He can’t control himself, the familiar panic closing over his throat, only this time it’s not a dream.

Ash stares at his hands and tries to remember what it feels like to not be in pain.

“Ash, it’s okay,” Eiji breathes more than says. He pulls his wrist away, and for a second, some tiny, insignificant part of Ash cries out in protest. 

But then he’s opening the car door and reaching for Ash and something about that gesture clicks with a memory Ash tried so hard to forget – 

“Don’t touch.” Ash chokes out, recoiling. “Please. It just makes things worse.”

Eiji pulls back like he’s been stung and Ash immediately regrets it. “I’m sorry.” He says, moving to leave the car altogether, and the panic surges inside Ash. “I’m so sorry.”

“No sorries,” Ash says, hoping his grimace looks like a smile, trying for humor. “Remember?”

Eiji returns the smile, but his eyes betray him. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” He slips over that word, but his pronunciation is already getting better.

“No.” Ash looks up from his lap and gets hit with a wave of nausea, likes his mind is doing consecutive backflips while he sits in place. “I just - I need to be alone. For a little while.”

Eiji nods. “Of course.” He bites his lip. “I found a restaurant finally and parked here, so I will be inside.” Softer now, “You want me to get something, like food? Water is okay?”

“Water is okay.”

“Okay.” He says. “If you need anything, I’m right there.”

Ash swallows. Some part of him wonders what kind of ulterior motive Eiji must have for being so kind. “Okay. Bye.”

 

Thirty minutes or so pass before Ash regains control of his body. He knows because he counted every shitty second of it to calm down, to shut out the outside world. Forced his mind to redo the simplest tasks and work up from there. By the end of it, he’s exhausted, sleepy, and thirsty as fuck.

It’s when he puts himself back together again that he realizes Eiji went for water thirty minutes ago and hasn’t come back. 

Ash gets out of the car, feeling something close to dread growing in his stomach. They parked in some sort of ski village and the cold bites into Ash as he starts down the parking lot to the entrance of a disheveled bar-and-grill. Eiji must be inside. He probably forgot about the water, and he’s taking pictures inside. Ash comes up with about a hundred other scenarios as he walks inside, each one more morbid than the last.

The smell is the first thing he notices as he walks in, the first red flag. Gunpowder, poorly masked with the haze of smoke that hangs in the tiny restaurant. There are bullet holes in the walls, piercing through hung-up deer heads and old vintage license plates. Posters of half-naked pin ups are a tasteful addition to the wall, and Ash swears their cat-eyes follow him as he makes his way to the bar. There’s a few grizzled old men sporting leather two-pieces and mugs of beer in the corner.

Then his gaze lands on Eiji, slumped against the bar counter and fully unconscious, and everything falls away.

Ash is at his side in a  second, tapping the man’s cheek. “Eiji.”

No response. His camera is still slung across his neck, but he’s completely still, fingers grazing a half-empty drink of something that is definitely not water. 

“No no no, Eiji,” Ash listens for breathing, checks for bruises, any signs. God, he just needs a sign if something happened. “Eiji, wake up.” 

Normal breathing, no bruises, nothing. Nothing could have happened. If something--or someone--hurt Eiji, God help him - 

The owner of the voice is a man in his early 20s. He towers over Ash, dark-skinned and wearing darker shades, even in the dim light of the bar. “He isn’t dead yet.” He reaches forward to sniff the mystery liquid in Eiji’s cup, several gold rings clinking against the glass, and sets it down again with an amused smile. “What kind of trouble was you up to that prompted a Sleeping Beauty?”

Ash’s head spins. “Sleeping Beauty?” The name has a ringing familiarity, but he can’t place where he heard it first. He can’t think very properly when Eiji is lying motionless in front of him. He tries to check Eiji’s pulse again while his own veins thrum. It’s terrifyingly faint, but still there.

Ash channels all the anxiety and rage into his voice until it’s all but a snarl. “How about you tell me what in the fuck you made him drink –” Ash leans close until he can smell the cigarettes in the man’s breath, see past the black sunglasses. “- and I don’t  _ kill you _ .”

The man has the audacity to laugh, completely unfazed. He pulls a towel off his shoulder and starts to wipe the empty wine glasses on the counter clean. “Calm down, kid. It’s not the drink you should be worried about.”

And then Ash is close enough to see the black pendant winking in the dim light of the bar and his blood runs cold. Everything else pales for a moment.

“There we are,” The man rumbles out a laugh, setting aside a wine glass to extend a bear paw of a hand, scrawled with tattoos and golden rings. “I’m Cain Blood. It’s a pleasure.” When Ash just stares at the hand in shocked silence, he adds, “You’re a bit of a celebrity around these parts, Ash.”

Cain Blood, the leader of the Black Sabbath and a member of Dino Golzine’s highly decorated network. Highly decorated in a sense that he’d rot in Hell for his crimes, if Ash believed in that kind of stuff. He says his wife and daughters died ten years ago, but that’s not true; Ash remembers storing that piece of information away in case he ever needed it. Ash knows seeing that black pendant, a trademark to the Corsican mafia, is worse than a death sentence. But still. He had been so, so careful since then; he’d stepped so lightly around the more dangerous job offers from the Corsican mafia.

How could they possibly have found out about him?

Ash takes a slow step backwards, wondering if he could move fast enough to smash a wine glass over Blood’s head. He couldn’t do it, not if he wanted to keep Eiji safe. So instead, he talks, hoping he could smoke out a weakness out of Blood before it’s too late. “What do you want from me? I cut ties with the network a long time ago.”

“You know those ties are never cut, kid.” Cain Blood smiles grimly, as if somewhere under his Cheshire amusement there’s a bit of humanity. “Yesterday, Frederick Arthur was found dead, face down in a pool of blood at a gas station on the outskirts of your hometown. They tracked it back to you.”

“What?” His pulse skips a beat. “I didn’t kill Arthur. I may have fucked his face up a bit, but I didn’t –“ He would have. Ash remembers the primal rage that came over him, how he didn’t know what he might have done if not for Eiji pulling him off the man. “I swear to God I didn’t kill him.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Blood says, disbelievingly. Ash doesn’t blame him, he’s probably heard the very same story from a thousand guilty people. “It doesn’t matter what you think, anyway. Dino sent out a red light yesterday.”

Ash’s heart nearly stops. He remembers the orders for red lights; at some points he was the one to pass the message along the network. Nothing in life was more certain than Dino Golzine’s red light. It was an order for absolute, inevitable death.

“How long do I have?” Is all he can ask. He doesn’t even try to deny the red light because he knows it’s no use.

“No, you’re going to see Dino. It’s not how long you have, I’m afraid.” Blood glances over to Eiji, black hair sweeping over closed eyes, completely vulnerable. It’s all he needs to do for everything to make sense.

“No. No no no.” It feels like someone pulled the floor out from under Ash. “No, Eiji can’t get a red light, he’s innocent.” He hates how his voice shakes, feeling his control of the conversation and his own anger slipping away.

Cain Blood gives him a look, almost like pity. Then his face is a mask, devoid of emotion. “Don’t make a scene, kid, you know how this works.” One hand reaches for a gun in his waistband while the other reaches for Eiji.

“I SAID NO.” Ash yells, swiping every single wine glass off the table. Before the glass can shatter on the ground, he’s between Eiji and Blood. He can hear the desperation in his voice. “You can’t do this, he’s fucking  _ innocent _ .”

Tables and chairs squeaking on the floor as people empty out of the bar. No doubt the cops are on their way. But Ash knows wishing for the cops at this point is false hope, there’s no jailhouse Dino can’t reach. He pulls the blade out of his pocket, switches it open like a threat.

“Calm down, Ash,” Cain has a hand out in front of him, kind of like those dog whisperers Ash used to watch on TV. Like he’s the calm one for spilling innocent blood, Eiji’s blood. Like Ash is something feral. Wild.

He hasn’t even seen wild yet.

Cain takes Ash’s silence as a good sign. “He’s still so doped up on Sleeping Beauty he won’t feel a thing. It’ll be a painless death.” Then, almost robotically, Cain’s shoulders sag. “I know what it feels to sacrifice for the red light.” Pointing to an unintelligible tattoo. “My wife and kids.”

 Ash feels like screaming until his voice is hoarse. He tries to, but all that comes out is crazed laughter. He’s remembered the crucial detail. “You’re a lying, hypocritical piece of shit.”

Cain takes a step back with the pistol cocked, a poker face with the tiniest hint of…guilt.

Bingo. There’s the weakness.

“You sorry motherfucker,” Ash has to pause from the peals of hysteric laughter rolling off of him. “You didn’t tell the network?” Ash presses forward while the hulk of a man steps back, hoping he can guide them away from Eiji. His shoulders are shaking from humor, fear, or both. “Did you really think a half-assed sob story could hide your family from the Corsican mafia?”

“I-I don’t know what you mean.” Cain’s back hits the far side of the bar, edging closer to the exit door. The barrel of his gun is drooped to the ground, all but forgotten.

Ash kicks the gun away and it skitters across the floor. The next thing he says makes the man freeze. “You had a wife named Elena and two girls, Mia and Gem. Four and six. They were the lights of your life.” He steps between Cain and the back door, purring. “Or should I say, are?”

Cain growls, swinging for a punch. His fist connects with Ash’s jaw and everything goes black for a second. When he regains consciousness, Ash can feel wall behind him and a hand around his throat, squeezing. “Who told you? Tell me and I’ll slit their throats after I get finished with you.”

“Uh uh uh,” Ash wills himself to stay calm, keep a smile on his face. He’s still in control. “You have to keep me alive for Dino, remember. Kill me and you’re a dead man walking.” He drops his smile. “You let them lay one finger on Eiji and I’ll make your life a living Hell as long as I’m alive. Gem won’t live to see seven.”

Cain Blood lets go of him, his face betraying him finally to reveal a broken man. Ash almost feels bad. Then he glances at Eiji in the corner and he doesn’t. Cain’s shoulders heave with suppressed sobs, and for a very long time he doesn’t say anything. Then, “Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do anything.”

Ash breathes out slowly, trying to will the panic out of his system. Being choked was an all too familiar feeling, welling up memories from his nightmare and before that. “Take away the red light.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Ash walks back to Eiji, the boy he’s known for a little over a day, heart racing. He checks his pulse, wondering if he could console Eiji in pain. When Ash would have sprained his ankle playing baseball or something stupid like that, and Griffin would pick him up onto his back like nothing and walk him home. He’d whisper nonsense things like, ‘It’s okay, Aslan.’ and ‘Don’t be a baby, now.’

“It’s okay.” Ash whispers it to Eiji so soft he might have imagined saying it. It sounds hollow when he says it.

He hoists Eiji onto his back with difficulty—the boy is much heavier than he looks—and turns to Cain. “You made your family disappear, right?”

Cain just nods at him wearily.

“Good,” Ash adjusts Eiji on his back. Carrying him shouldn’t feel as steadying as it does, but Eiji is reassuringly warm and solid. Ash turns his attention back to Cain Blood, whose pendant glints black as blood. “Take me to them. I want you to make us disappear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry it took me so long to update again, I had to really sit down and think about where this story is going. Thanks so much for reading! I will continue posting every Tuesday from now, hopefully on a more regular basis :)


	13. You've Got a Friend in Me (Randy Newman)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shorter and Yut-Lung find out where Ash went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You've got a friend in me  
> When the road looks rough ahead  
> And you're miles and miles  
> From your nice warm bed  
> You just remember what your old pal said  
> Boy, you've got a friend in me."  
> Randy Newman

Nothing really surprises Shorter anymore. After years of consuming the family’s rotten restaurant leftovers, his stomach has become immune to unexpected events. Nadia dragged him to so many psychological thrillers as a kid that jump scares could never make him flinch.

But when he hears news of Arthur’s death, it shakes Shorter to his fucking core.

Yut-Lung’s the one who breaks it to him. They’re driving around all of Ash’s normal hideouts in Shorter’s van, when he gets a message from one of his brothers in their rare Chinese dialect that Shorter could never understand. He turns to Shorter, strangely calm, and says, “Arthur is dead.”

Shorter, being an intellectual, promptly swerves onto the shoulder, slams the brake, and exclaims, “Get the fuck.”

“This isn’t a joke, Shorter,” Yut-Lung narrows his eyes, pulling his hair onto the other shoulder as he taps a foot. He always acts like this when it comes to Ash. Like everything he does is as normal as getting coffee every morning, yeah two sugars please, keep the change. Regardless, there’s nothing Yut-Lung can do to dispel the tension when he asks the question in both of their minds, “Do you think this might have to do with Ash?”

Shorter pulls out of the shoulder, not sure where he’s headed but feeling the need to do something, something other than sit in a stupefied silence. “Ash has done...so many morally questionable things. I’d need to make a fucking list. But murder -” Memories of juvie flood through his head, remembering the events that led to Ash’s being admitted. Shorter knows Ash wouldn’t kill, simply because there’s too many people living in Ash’s life who would already be dead. “He’s not a murderer, trust me.”

Shorter turns onto the main road, combing his mind for any other place that him and Ash have hung out, places they grew up in, places where Ash slept when he couldn’t in his own home.

_ “Do _ you trust him?” Yut-Lung asks, staring out the window. “We’re not going to pretend Arthur was an angel, he did some really ugly things to Ash.” His gaze turns far away, and Shorter he’s not necessarily speaking for Ash anymore. “Sometimes people have so much built-up anger that they can’t deal with it anymore. I wouldn’t blame Ash.” His words hang heavy in the silence between them, almost like Yut-Lung was excusing Ash’s prospective murder. 

Shorter chooses to ignore him, partially because he’s scared to press further into Yut-Lung’s psychopathic tendencies and partially because they’ve reached Ash’s last frequented place in Cape Cod; the Old Jimmy’s on the outskirts of town. If Ash was anywhere on a Friday night, he was with Max downing cheap beer. 

That’s when they see cop cars down the street, outside the Gas n Go. Yut-Lung sends him a meaningful look. “Figure that’s what I think it is?”

Shorter drags a hand through his newly-ruined hair and sighs. “I know I said Arthur and his guys would roast in Hell and everything, but that was more of a long-term goal for me.” He twists an end of his hair. “Do we have to confront them so early in the morning? The mohawk’s kinda growing on me.”

Yut-Lung scoffs and unclips his seat belt. “Can you not worry about your hair once a goddamn while? Let’s go.” 

 

The gas station is suffocated with yellow caution tape, local news reporters and all of Cape Cod’s only two police squadrons. Needless to say, Arthur’s death is probably the biggest deal their town has had in awhile, and the scene swims in an almost giddy energy.

Arthur’s body isn’t on the concrete, but there’s a pretty obvious indicator that he’s been there.

“Son of a bitch.” Shorter lets out a low whistle when he sees the blood stain not even ten feet from the entrance of the sliding doors. The cops don’t let them get any nearer to the crime scene, but even a satellite could see how the blood soaked into the cracks of the asphalt. “Can someone even have that much blood in them?” 

Yut Lung is surprisingly silent next to him. Shorter’s about to say something about it when he gets rudely interrupted by a grab at his sleeve.

“Excuse me?” It’s a lady reporter, adorned in rhinestone glasses and lipstick in a color similar to the blood stain next to them. “I’m Sydney Kreutzer from the Times. Did you know the victim of this crime?”

Shorter barely has time to answer before her mic is thrust into his face. “You mean Arthur?”

Her lips make an ‘o’ and Shorter knows he made a mistake. “Were you and Arthur classmates in school? Did he get in trouble often? Do you know what prompted Ash Lynx to kill him?”

“I-wait, what?” Shorter says. “No, wait. How do you know it was Ash?”

“We have a witness who said she saw two men, one of them named Ash Lynx, systematically beat and murder Frederick Arthur right before sunrise in this parking lot.”

“No, that can’t be true, Ash would never murder anyone, he’s - wait, did you say two men?”

“Did you know Ash Lynx personally? Tell me, is it true that he got suspended for beating Cole Reichen senseless with a two-by-four?”

Shorter fumbles. “Yeah, I do, but - “

“So that’s a yes, he  _ did  _ nearly kill Cole Reichen then- ?“

Yut-Lung grabs Shorter’s arm and leans into the mic with a curt, “No, thanks.”

And then he’s part leading, part dragging Shorter out of the parking lot and back into Old Jimmy’s, swearing under his breath the whole time. “We -” He all but shoves Shorter into the passenger’s seat before slamming the door and climbing into the driver’s. “- are in deep, deep shit.”

“Wha-Hey, careful!” Shorter lurges forward as Yut-Lung slams the gas and speeds in reverse out of the parking lot, onto the main road. “You’re going the wrong way!”  

“I know I am.” Yut-Lung bites back. “While you were flirting with little miss ABC 11, I found out what happened to Ash.”

“I know,” Shorter says. “They’re blaming Ash for Shorter’s murder.”

“Not just that.” Yut-Lung enters the ramp into Interstate 80, gunning the engine. “Dino. Fucking. Golzine issued a red light yesterday. To avenge Arthur’s death.”

“Oh,  _ shit  _ me,” Shorter presses into his temples, feeling as a throbbing headache manifests itself in his head. The words echoed in his head and Shorter feels physically sick. Matter of fact, he rolls down the window to retch for a few seconds before ducking back in to respond again, “So why the fuck are we on the highway?”

“Can’t you use your brain for one goddamn second, headass?” Yut-Lung practically hisses as he flips the signal. Shorter’s surprised the turn signal doesn’t snap clean off from the force he uses.

“Watch it - that’s my car, fucktard!” 

“Irrelevant.” Yut-Lung screeches, cutting in front of a Sedan and getting a barrage of honks in return. “What’s important is Ash was last seen six hours down the interstate and we need to keep him from fucking dying.” 

“Fine, but if you keep gunning it twenty over we’re going to get flagged down before sunset,” Shorter grips the handle for dear life as Yut-Lung cuts another corner changing lanes, probably in spite. “How do have that kind of information on him anyway?”

Yut-Lung turns to him, quirking an eyebrow. “Never underestimate my sources.”

They very narrowly miss an eighteen wheeler, and it’s enough to make Shorter roar in utter terror. “WATCH THE ROAD, GENIUS!”

Yut-Lung indignantly blows out a strand of hair, rolling his eyes as he moves them back to the road. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

For the next few hours, Shorter tries to keep his stomach in his body and to not think about Ash’s imminent death as much. Regardless, he wonders if Ash knows about the red light. He wonders what Ash must have been thinking driving down this stretch of highway, if he ever did. If he was scared.

Somewhere in the middle of that fateful summer afternoon, he sends the boy a telepathic message.

 

 

Don’t worry, Ash. We’re coming for you.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry this was delayed a day, I couldn't figure out how to end this chapter >.< Hopefully, it turned out alright. Hope the simultaneous story lines are not too confusing...if you couldn't tell, Shorter and Yut-Lung embark on their journey on Interstate-80 just a few hours behind Eiji and Ash.   
> If you still are a bit confused, considering reading Chapter 9 again!  
> Stay tuned to see how it goes!


	14. Creep (Radiohead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash realizes how much Eiji means to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You float like a feather  
> In a beautiful world  
> And I wish I was special  
> You're so fuckin' special."  
> Radiohead, Creep

Cain leads Ash and Eiji to something like a multipurpose room in the back of the bar before leaving again, muttering something about a train in the morning. Multipurpose is a misleading way to describe it; there are guns stocked on the wall, framing more acute torture for all purposes; rope, an assortment of knifes, packages of narcotics with yellow ribbons securing them like candy. There’s a few bar stools scattered about the room that have seen better days. Ash doesn't have to look at the gray linoleum floors twice to recognize the rusty discoloration: blood stains. There's a storage closet in the corner next to a freezer that wheezes and makes guttural sounds every few minutes, and a back door that leads to who knows where outside the bar. Ash lays Eiji down in the cleanest spot he can find and slumps against the wall next to him.

Ash doesn't get scared easily. He's lived through enough gore and horror in his real life to know the scariest things aren't jumpscares on a TV screen or ax-wielding maniacs. When those nightmares are the only stable thing in Ash's life, he knows what to do to make that kind of pain go away.

The scariest things to Ash are the slow, calm, drifting things. The gradual loss of his humanity. The feeling of emptiness. 

Eiji barely breathing.

Cain doesn't have to tell Ash that the amount of Sleeping Beauty he gave Eiji was more than the normal dose, regarded he wasn't expecting Eiji to wake up again. Ash wants to wring Cain's neck for it--unrelatedly, Cain has a bruise on the left side of his face--but most of all, Ash is furious at himself. Furious for being involved with the Corsican mafia, not being able to control himself, not being able to protect Eiji from his bloodstained past.

Eiji, who doesn't have anything even closely resembling a defense mechanism. Eiji, who has been nothing but kind to Ash since they met, the first kind person who didn't want something in return. 

Eiji, who won't wake up.

The guilt is a saw in Ash's chest. He's done so many things he should have felt guilty for, it's the first time in a long time that he actually let's remorse wash over him. He loses himself in it.

Minutes turn to hours dragging by while Ash waits for Cain to come back. He keeps the time by checking Eiji's breathing every five minutes, feeling the stone in his stomach get heavier when it doesn't change.

The time alone makes Ash remember things he wanted to forget. Memories of how the network bloodied his hands when he was a child, forced him into sinful crimes, left him with nothing but petty cash that lasted days and trauma that lasted for years.

It also makes him remember Blanca, maybe the only mentor figure Ash had. Blanca was the first person who taught Ash about self control. He trained Ash where to hit in a fight, but also how to make his words sharp like knives for threats, blackmail, seduction. Blanca taught him how to rob a store and never be traced. But he never addressed emotional baggage. He said anxiety, panic and loss were infections. Infections could be cut out. 

That was bullshit.

At most, it was a well-packaged lie. One that Ash spent endless sleepless nights believing while bent over himself in panic, catatonic from hyperventilation, heaving into toilets. His life teetered between numbing apathy and uncontrollable hysteria. He completed the Corsican mafia’s dirtiest jobs with practiced ease, exemplary of Blanca’s well-taught apathy; only to come home and drown in the emotions he’d starved from.

Learning to fight was easy. Ash had failed Blanca as a student because he felt too much, too intensely. And maybe that was the biggest weakness of all, one big enough that he cut ties with that cold, unabashed version of himself, his ghost; the one the network held so dearly.

Like he said, karma’s a fucking bitch.

Such a bitch that years later, Ash is still repaying his sins. Watching helplessly as sweet, innocent Eiji slowly succumbs to overdose on a grimy floor in a bar somewhere in the Appalachian United States. 

If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s Eiji. He should be smiling and laughing in the way that he did that morning in the car. That breathtaking moment when it began in his eyes, curving them into crescent moons, the sunlight turning their earthy brown to something like molten caramel. Then to his lips, catching the bottom one between straight white teeth, a dimple teasing at his cheek. Ash doesn’t know why he remembers it so vividly, but for some reason he can’t bear to forget that sight. He would make Eiji smile like that thousands, millions of times more if he can, because Eiji deserves it more than anyone. Eiji should be somewhere in California right now, but he’s not. And it’s all Ash’s fault.

It’s all his fault.

Ash checks Eiji’s pulse for the millionth time, so dazed with exhaustion that he doesn’t remember if it’s faster than before. He’s gone numb to the temperature of the room, but Ash takes off his jacket and drapes it over the boy’s shoulders nevertheless, a pathetic attempt to block out the cold.

He doesn’t believe in a god but tonight he prays for anyone, anything out there that can spare a miracle. Counts all his lucky stars, or however the fucking lullaby goes. 

It’s a bleary realization in the thick of the night, but a real one. When Ash realizes there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to have Eiji to just open his eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So this happens. I'm sorry for the angst in this chapter but maybe it gets better? Or worse.
> 
> As always, any feedback, criticism, prayers for Eiji are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!


	15. Stars (Sam Ailey)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We were lovers, we were doomed from the start  
> It was all broken clockwork, the dancers both fall apart  
> Maybe it was a dream, and I just woke up."  
> Sam Ailey, Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A promise falls through, and Ash discovers what he would do to make Eiji open his eyes.

Cain walks after what feels like minutes and years at the same time, struggling to carry a tray of coffees and a plastic grocery bag on one hand while he opens the door. “You look like shit,” He remarks, then nods at Eiji. “He doing okay?”

“Just fucking peachy,” Ash tries for a witty smile but his fatigue turns it into something like a wince. He narrows his eyes at the bag. “You were gone for a while.”

“Right, yeah,” Cain sets the coffee tray on a rusty bar stool and opens the bag, handing him a few Slim Jims and a steaming cup. “I picked some stuff up for our...trip today.” He seems nervous, a bit jittery. Ash figures it’s the coffee.

Ash eyes the steaming, vague black liquid, still not trusting Cain enough after last night. Once Cain takes a swig of his own drink, Ash prods him with his Converse. “Switch with me.”

“Fuck’s sake,” The man mutters, but hands his cup over nevertheless. “I said I was sorry about last night. It’s a miracle the kid’s still alive.”

“Oh really?” Ash feigns innocence. “‘Cause last I checked, you’re the one who doped him up on sedatives, so it’s a miracle I haven’t cut your guts out in the first place.” 

He has to calm himself down after that, taking a sip from the styrofoam rim. “Who the fuck died in this coffee? Tastes like horseshit.” Ash downs it anyway.

Cain gives him a warning look, too tired to say anything else. It’s strange, Ash didn’t expect him to just take the blame. Cain just slumps onto the bar stool looking defeated, and it makes him feel the tiniest wisp of remorse.

“Thanks,” Ash rephrases, cautiously. “Don’t expect anything back.”

“Of course not.” Cain replies. His gaze drifts to Eiji and instinctively, Ash shifts a bit closer to his sleeping form. He quirks an eyebrow at the gesture. “Someone paying you money to keep him alive?”

“What, I need to get money to protect an innocent person?” Ash retaliates.

“You’re no stranger to this business, Ash,” Cain says knowingly. Ash hates how he sounds like he’s chastising a child. “Hundreds of red lights have been innocent one way or the other and you know it. So why would something as rational as you -” He leans in, voice dropping, like they’re sharing a secret. “- try to start with someone who obviously doesn’t have money, drugs,  or sex to offer?” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Ash grits out. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s what we have to do to survive here,” Cain starts, but then sees something in Ash’s face that makes his expression change. “Or maybe… No, it’s not about surviving with him, is it?” A long silence, then he shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Ash.”

“What?” Ash asks, pitch rising with his sleep-deprived hysteria. Some part of him understands the meaning in Cain’s look completely, and he smothers it down. “Am I wrong, for not letting one person I care about die for the sake of Dino’s pride? Is that so  _ fucking wrong _ ?”

“That’s not it,” Cain puts a hand over his face, shaking his head. “It’s just - oldest rule in the book. You’re never supposed to stay close to the people you love.”

“I don’t -” Ash’s voice breaks, and he falls silent for a while. 

“Maybe not.” Cain sighs. “You’ll find out when someone like Dino steals him away from you again. That’s why I hid -” He stops. “That’s why my family is dead. You keep your enemies closer than your friends, you know that.”

Ash thinks he’s stable enough to speak up. “What a fucking lovely rule you’ve got there, Cain. You should put that on a billboard or something, with other useless strings of pretty words.”

“Ash,” Cain warns.

“No, I’m serious. People love crap like that, they just eat it up -”

“Cut the sarcastic shit.” Cain roars. “I’m trying to give you advice. Even if Eiji makes it to see daylight, he will  _ never _ be safe if he’s next to you and you know it. So whatever mess he’s got himself into -”

“That’s my  _ fucking _ problem! Eiji didn’t get himself into a mess,” Ash says, hearing the fight leave his voice as he says those words. “I dragged him into this mess, my mess. And I don’t know what to do.” The last part is deathly quiet, the first time Ash admits it out loud.

“Well, answer’s simple, isn’t it?” Cain looks him in the eye. “If you can’t get rid of Eiji, get rid of the mess.”

 

Ash opens his mouth to make another retort about Cain’s cliche advice, but there’s a loud bang at the front of the bar before he can say anything. Gunshots. Another bang and the sound of splitting wood, busted locks. He looks to Cain for answers, alarmed -

Cain’s face is a mask. “Your time is up, I’m afraid.” 

“W-What?” The world turns on its head. Ash should have known, he should have fucking known better, but he still grasps for a response from the man. “No, you said - said there was a trip -“

The sound of groaning as the front door falls to the ground.

Ash is already edging towards Eiji, but he stubbornly refuses to believe the obvious answer: Cain's betrayal. “What about the fucking trip, Cain? What about disappearing?”

The man stares back at him but he might as well be staring the grimy cinder block wall behind Ash. “I’m sorry.” He glances at the storage closet, before saying something that gets smothered with another gunshot.

Ash doesn’t need to hear those words to take the hint. In a second, he’s whipping around, scooping one arm under Eiji’s knees and another around his shoulders and lifting him as gently as he can. To Ash’s utmost joy and mortal terror, Eiji stirs in his arms, already showing more signs of life than he has in the last several hours.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Ash kicks open the tiny storage closet and of fucking course it’s standing room only. Heavy footsteps make their way to the entrance of the back room as Ash sets Eiji on his feet and pulls them into what little hiding space they have. He tries not to think about holding a sleeping Eiji up against his chest, whose head lolls but remains dangerously close to waking. He especially tries not to notice their extremely close proximity; how clean Eiji smells, his hair tickling Ash’s jaw. Instead, shock and anger pulse through his veins as he closes the door silently, peers through the slanted grills on the closet at Cain.

Cain lied to them. 

It all makes sense now. He drugged Eiji, notified the network of their location and coaxed them into this trap, all the while pretending to be a friend. But his thoughts shatter with the last piercing gunshot shakes the room, blasting the back room door off its hinges.

The blast shocks Eiji awake, and Ash feels both like screaming and laughing at the irony of it. Somehow the boy chose worst moment to wake up. Nevertheless, regardless of their compromised situation, a small part of Ash is dizzy with joy. He feels the boy slowly gain his footing, dazed, before realizing his constraints. When Eiji opens his mouth to scream Ash clamps a hand down on it, just in time. In the ringing quiet that follows the gun blast, Ash dips his head next to Eiji’s ear and mutters a few crucial words. “It’s me. Be absolutely quiet.” He imagines the terror Eiji must be feeling and softens, “I’m sorry, I’ll explain later.”

Eiji just nods, trembling.

Then Marvin walks through the doorway, flanked by two other Corsicans and sporting a pistol in each fat, doughy hand and Ash finds it very hard to stay quiet.

“Well, well, well,” Marvin Crosby purrs, nodding at the goons to stay by the door while he sidles up to Cain, who looks absolutely broken. Just the sight of him wells up some of Ash’s worst memories; dirty alleys, hotel rooms in various states of decay, disgusting people. Marvin was an ugly man, inside and out, using his power in Dino’s hierarchy to carry out any sinful ideas he had. 

“If it isn’t so nice to meet you again, Cain.” He extends the hand that doesn’t hold his gun. His pendant gleams in the colorless fluorescent lights. “I’ll admit I wasn’t that proud when you called up at two this morning, but you mentioned Ash Lynx, and well -” A smile stretches across his face, slimy and frog-like. “I was intrigued.”

Cain shakes his hand once, lifelessly. “Marvin. How’s the leg?” It’s a wisecrack; Cain must have remembered what Ash did to Marvin back in the day when he got.. handsy.

“Oh, well, it’s you know,” Marvin’s eyes dart around the room hungrily, paying little attention to Cain’s words. “Would be better when I get a hold of the Lynx who did it to me. Speaking of,” His gaze trails back to Cain, daunting. “Where are they, Cain? Ash and his little kitty cat?”

Ash’s breath catches. Eiji stiffens and leans back into him, trying to get as far away from the door as possible. There’s a palpable silence where Ash holds his breath waiting for Cain to rat them out, already planning a way to get the hell out of there, and then -

“They got away,” Cain sighs, much to Ash’s surprise. “You know how Ash is. He busted my face up and ran.” He motions to the blotchy bruise on his cheek, and Ash almost smiles with relief. “You just missed him, really.”

“Really?” Marvin asks, his voice getting dangerously low. “It’s only been a few hours, Cain, how could you of all people let go of two kids that easy?”

Cain shrugs and his shoulders barely come back down when Marvin strikes him across the face with the butt of the pistol, knocking him down. Eiji jumps with the suddenness of it, his gasp muffled in Ash’s palm. 

“You know, Cain.” Marvin snarls, all manners of calm lost. “That sounds a tad bit hard to believe.”

Ash’s breath catches. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve Cain’s sticking up for him, but now he wants nothing more than to bust out of the closet and slit Marvin’s throat. Still, he knows even the thought of it is unrealistic, and the last thing he wants to do is put Eiji in danger.

Cain gets up with great difficulty, any ounce of fighting spirit lost from his form. Ash is filled with a sense of dread when he realizes what Cain’s plan is.

He isn’t expecting to survive this fight. 

“You’re right,” Cain mutters, squaring his shoulders, taking his black sunglasses off and dropping them on the floor next to him. “He gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I let them go.”

Marvin sneers. “What kind of offer could possibly be worth defying a red light?”

“My freedom. My freedom from this network of lies,” Cain says, and lunges for Marvin’s neck.

It happens so quickly. The familiar sound of the pistol firing slices through the air like a clap of thunder, and Cain is crumpling to the ground in front of Marvin, the now bloodied pendant dangling helplessly from his neck. Red blooms in his abdomen, spreading through his shirt and onto the floor until old bloodstains are indistinguishable from new on the linoleum. His eyes gaze up at the ceiling tile, fluorescent hanging lights, peaceful. Unblinking.

It happens in two seconds or so.

Eiji shakes violently, breathing in irregular, shuddering bursts. Ash knows he’s shaking too, but he’s all too familiar with this story, this ending. He feels wetness on his hand - Eiji is crying - and realizes how the boy is quite literally reliving Ash’s nightmare from earlier that day. 

Guilt weighs Ash down like nothing before. He bends to press his forehead into Eiji’s shoulder in an attempt to be consoling. He’s unable to stare at Cain’s body any longer, and silently hopes Eiji’s closing his eyes.

Marvin pushes at Cain with the edge of his polished leather shoe, not an ounce of regret showing in his face. “Dirty traitor, turning over the network for some low-life kids.” He glances around the room until his eyes land on Ash’s cluster of coffee and snacks, one of the Slim Jims half opened. “You know, something tells me...” There’s a long silence as Marvin pauses, listening. “...they’re still here.”

Ash’s stomach drops, tightening his hold on Eiji, holding his breath. He feels Eiji’s heart hammering away and wonders if Marvin can hear it. Ash wills him to be still, silent. If Marvin opens this door, they’re dead.

Pure, unadulterated fear grows inside him as Marvin takes one step toward the closet. 

Then another. 

And another.

Marvin’s hand reaches for the handle of the door…

And then there’s the piercing squeal of sirens and thudding near the front of the bar as someone yells, “POLICE HERE, OPEN UP.”

Marvin lets out a colorful string of curse words, pulling away from the door to nod at his two subordinates. He reloads his gun before briskly walking out the entrance of the back door into the heart of the bar. He doesn’t spare Cain a second glance, and fury rocks Ash to his very core.

But there’s no time for that. As soon as Marvin and the two others have left the room, Ash reaches around Eiji to open the door, taking advantage of what little time they have before the Corsican mafia and the police are done with each other.

All Ash has to say to Eiji is “Let’s move.” And the two of them are piling out of the closet. Eiji has silent tears running down his cheeks, eyes rimmed in red, but the color has returned to his face and he’s breathing fast and words can’t describe how relieved Ash is that he’s alive.

“Thank God you’re awake,” Ash breathes fully for maybe the first time that night.

Eiji gives him a small smile. His tear-bright eyes meet Ash’s, searching, before he looks down at Cain. “Wh-why did they have to kill him?”

“I don’t know,” Ash answers, truthfully. He kneels down next to Cain, gently pulling the man’s head onto his lap, unclipping the blood-soaked pendant. His eyes prick at the sight of Cain up close, but he continues the procedure Blanca taught him all those years ago. “I don’t know, Eiji.”

Gunshots and shout ring from inside the bar as the police are notified of Marvin’s armed presence and scramble for their own guns and protection, sirens wailing in the midst of it all. Ash knows there isn’t much time before one is finished with the other and they come looking in the back room. He works quickly.

“What are you doing?” Eiji asks, scared and confused. He swipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater yet visibly quaking, fighting to stay composed.

Ash tries to speak to Eiji as gently, reassuringly as he can. “I’m making sure he’ll be at peace.” He feels around the man’s jean shirt for a wallet, trying not to think about Cain’s blood coating his hands. The fight in the bar reaches a swollen crescendo as screams and the thunderous claps of gunfire are heard through the walls. Ash thumbs through the wallet until he finds what he’s looking for, and puts the entire wallet in his pocket. Surprisingly, Eiji doesn’t question it.

Ash desperately tries to wipe his shaking hands on his jacket so he can press Cain’s eyelids closed without staining them, but Eiji lays a clean hand on his in understanding. “I’ll do it,” He says, softly. He reaches out and shuts the man's eyes. Then, he places a feather-light touch to Cain’s forehead, his own eyes fluttering shut as he whispers a few quiet words in Japanese.

For a moment, all the raucous fades into white noise. Everything falls away except for Eiji. For a moment, Ash can’t bear to look away, mesmerized.

A blast from main room shakes him out of his trance. There’s a sense of deja vu as Eiji opens his eyes, carefully pulls Ash to his feet and leads them out through the back exit. And then they’re stumbling out of the bar, sprinting away from the noise and on to the crop of trees behind the bar, until it’s nothing but a pinprick of light behind them.

There’s a sense of deja vu as the world blurs together, much like it did when they raced down the asphalt away from a dying Arthur, but maybe now it’s because Ash is crying. And a strange feeling washes over him as they run. 

A surreal feeling, like he’s slipping away from reality, and the only thing grounding him is Eiji’s hand around his, pulling him up and forward, forward out into the icy cold nowhere. 

The feeling of warmth from his touch, an anchor in the darkness that Ash would have drowned in.

 

And the feeling of wanting more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Hope this chapter was worth the suspense. I highly recommend listening to Stars by Sam Ailey, it's what I played while I was writing this chapter and I think it conveys an emotion in the end of the chapter that I don't think I can write.  
> Please let me know how you liked this chapter and where you think the story is going :) I appreciate any feedback.


	16. Blue Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cain's aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The featured music for this chapter is Blue Bird, the Banana Fish OST that plays when Ash opens up to Eiji about his past. In a way, this chapter models that scene.

 

 

Eiji has heard somewhere that snow absorbs sound.

 

It makes sense, because it doesn’t take long after him and Ash are running that the cacophony from the rundown bar fades into suffocating quiet. The snow had started falling sometime during the night.

Eiji decides he likes the quietness of the early morning even less than the wailing of police sirens or barrage of bullets. He hates that it leaves him with nothing but his thoughts.

Thoughts...if only he could call it that. Whether they be thoughts, memories, or any recollection from last night, they feel surreal. Confusing. Everytime he tries to make sense of the empty spots of his memory - the hours gone by without a trace - Eiji only feels more disoriented. The adrenaline that propelled him away from the fight at the bar has seeped out of Eiji, and now his movements are sluggish and dulled, like he’s wading through water in a pool. A throbbing in the back of his head alludes to alcohol but he doesn’t even remember drinking… or did he drink? Back at the bar? It’s impossible to tell.

For the millionth time Eiji almost looks over his shoulder to ask Ash, and then decides not to. Whatever exhaustion he must be feeling is nothing compared to what Ash must have gone through. Somehow his hand is still clasped in Eiji’s, running alongside him, but at the same time, Ash is...somewhere else. His gaze is unfocused, like he’s stuck in a memory and can’t help but play it over and over again in his head.

Eiji knows that feeling. Spending hours in bed mulling over the end of the beginning of his pole vaulting career. He remembers being trapped in his own head, deconstructing the worst day in his life and wondering what little actions he could have made, what little details he missed to have prevented that fall. All that analysis had made him into a coward, one that ran away from his dream for fear of ruining it. He knows, from experience, that there’s no value in that kind of tortuous thinking. It only makes people dig deeper into their own graves.

 

That's why when they stumble out into an almost-deserted mini strip mall, Eiji slows to a stop in the desolate parking lot. He makes another futile attempt to try and coax Ash out of his trance. 

“Ash,” Eiji whispers, but the boy doesn’t show any sign of hearing him. He’s focused on a crack in the icy asphalt, unseeing. In a split second, Eiji remembers the dead bartender’s similar cold, dead gaze. He shivers violently, squeezing Ash’s wrist. “Ash, please tell me what happened.”

For a second, boy is silent, blinking slowly in the moonlight. Then, he shifts to pull his hand away and stares at Eiji, tense with growing anger. “That’s not fair.” His voice is quiet, dangerous. “I’m supposed to ask you what happened. What happened when I walked into that fucking _death trap_ of a bar and saw you passed out on the counter -” His voice rises with every word, wavering. “- And I - I thought you were _dying,_ Eiji. For hours, you were dying in front of my eyes and I couldn’t fucking do a thing.” His voice cracks, his next words are quiet even in the snow. He’s gone again, talking more to himself now. “I couldn’t do anything for you. Not even one damn thing.”

Eiji reaches out to him again, “Ash -”

“Don’t - do that,” Ash takes a staggering step back, unstable. His eyes are silver gray in the moonlight, flooded with emotion. “Don’t do that to me. Don’t try to comfort me, or help me, or - or shit like that because I can’t return that favor. I couldn’t keep Cain safe, I’ve done fuckall for you this past night, I c - I can’t -” He covers his mouth with the back of his hand, dropping to his knees in the snow, shaking.

Ash lets out a heaving sigh and brings both hands to his face. For a few terrifying seconds it looks like he’s laughing. Then Eiji recognizes noiseless sobs racking his body, the shoulders shuddering, and the silence is suddenly worse, much worse.

For a moment, Eiji doesn’t know what to do. It’s hard to remember Ash being younger than Eiji at times like this, when his walls come crashing down. Eiji realizes how much he has taken that strong, dispassionate side of Ash for granted, and it fills him with shame.

“Ash,” Eiji doesn’t say his name as much as he breathes it, sees it dissipate like a cloud in the frigid air around them. He crouches down next to the boy. Carefully, cautiously, Eiji lays a tentative hand on his back and rubs in slow, easy circles. Ash doesn’t move away from him this time, either pretending not to notice the gesture or too tired to object it.

 

They sit like that for what might have been minutes but feels like years. 

 

Eiji waits for Ash to calm down, slowly evening out his hiccuping breaths. He watches as soft, silent snowflakes collect on blonde eyelashes and disappear. 

When Ash finally wipes his eyes on a shirt sleeve with an air of finality, Eiji poses the question. “Ash?”

The boy sniffs, and Eiji’s abruptly very conscious of his hand still on his back. Ash might have even leaned into the touch, but it’s so subtle Eiji thinks he’s imagining things. “What.”

Eiji breathes in. “Why do you think my actions need something in return?” Holds his breath.

Ash looks at him blearily, mildly surprised, before steeling himself and turning away. His words are barely audible, even in the wintry stillness. “Because that’s how my world works, Eiji.”

“What?”

“Comfort, affection…” He says the words jerkily, with a great deal of difficulty. “That shit’s never been unconditional for me.” His eyes dart to Eiji, then back to staring at the few people wandering around the strip mall. The listlessness is starting to ease off of him while they’ve been talking, like the remnants of a dream come morning time. 

“In my lifetime, I have never received anything like that without… ulterior motives. Always in exchange for bad, bad requests. Then when I screamed for help, no one heard me.” Ash takes a shaky breath. Stares at his hands, still stained red from the man before. 

“That was a long time ago. I’ve learned to cut it all out since then, distance myself, but on nights like this -” Ash’s voice catches. “Nights like this, I don’t know what to do.” A lone tear betrays him, slipping down his cheek and onto a palm crusted with blood. “I’m terrified of myself. I-I don’t think I feel anything anymore. I don’t…”

“You do feel things, Ash.” Eiji shifts a bit closer to him, just a bit. “I know you do. You’re hurting so much.” He feels his own eyes well up, but he forces the tears back. He needs to be the strong one now. “Whatever happened to make you feel like this is _not your fault_ , please know that.”

Eiji moves his hand up to Ash’s shoulder, and this time the boy very visibly responds to him, leaning closer. “And know this too; I am not here with any… ulterior motive, I promise.” He smiles at him lightly. “We are friends. I don’t want anything other than for you to be happy. And I’ll _always_ be here, if you’ll have me.”

Ash holds his gaze until Eiji is nearly breathless with the fear that he said something wrong. Then, he slowly wipes his eyes and smiles back. “But you do need something in return, don’t you?”

Eiji pales. “I do?”

Ash laughs, even though his voice is still thick with emotion. It’s rings through the quiet winter morning, and Eiji thinks it’s the best sound he’s heard all night. “I mean, someone needs to get you to California in one piece.”

Eiji’s beaming before he knows it. “You’re right! Even though we lost the car I need someone to help me read those English signs and place orders for me and -”

He feels a weight on his shoulder, warm breaths fanning out against his collarbone. “Then just stay with me,” He hears Ash murmur into his shirt. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

Eiji wonders if Ash can hear his heart pounding. He nods, not trusting himself to speak.

But when enough time passes that he thinks he can (and then a little more), Eiji prompts the question that hasn’t escaped his mind. “Ash?”

“Mm?”

“Can you tell me what happened when I was asleep?”

Cold air fills the space where Ash’s head was as he straightens, and those lucent green eyes are holding Eiji’s in a steady gaze, dead serious. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Eiji nods. This isn’t like his shattered dream anymore, there’s no more running. “Please tell me.”

Ash looks at him with a strange, unreadable expression. Then, he dips his head. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything.”

 

 

So he does.

  
  
  
  


 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading so much! Every one of your kudos and comments mean so much to me and I'm sorry this chapter came out late. :( Either way, give me some feedback if you want to hear from a certain character or have anything at all to say !  
> Stay tuned because I post every Tuesday!


	17. The Day That Wasn't (Umbrella Academy)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Charlie Dickinson... and the plot thickens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I think maybe you're the only person who really knows who I am and still likes me anyway."
> 
> \- Allison Hargreeves, The Day That Wasn't

There’s nothing Detective Charlie Dickinson loves more than a good mystery. 

It’s ironic because in all other aspects of life Charlie is a man of routine. He wakes up at 7:30 sharp every morning to sunshine that spills into his gray studio apartment. He likes his plain brown suits preironed with a crease to cut the night before, briefcase prepacked, shoes and socks laid right in front of the door. That way all he needs to do is shave and brush before heading out for breakfast at the diner he’s been a regular at for years.

In fact, Charlie thinks this mundane lifestyle only deepens his fascination for the unpredictable. It gives him a blank slate with which to analyze his cases, to pick them apart and truly examine them. Because most mysteries, no matter how nonsensical or freakish, have an ordinary explanation.

There hasn’t been one case left unsolved with this strategy. It’s earned Charile a lot of respect in New York’s police departments over the past ten years, given him quite a reputation.

Part of the reason Charlie thinks he’s so deft with murder and homicide cases is he knows how to think like a murderer. Other criminal investigators have a sometimes fatal lack of perspective; they only really know how to think like policeman, being on the right side of the law. Charlie, however, knows how thin the line between right and wrong can be. He knows how to get in the heads of those closeted psychopaths. He knows how to look in places police wouldn’t even think to look, see signs of psychological decay that they wouldn’t catch, capture criminals that can slip through iron prison bars.

But there’s one overarching reason why Charlie so easily derails drug cartels and serial killers alike. Charlie’s love for solving mysteries led him to discover the vast underground network of drugs, mobsters, and crime sprawled like throughout Northeast America like poison ivy. The network that has systematically evaded the law enforcement system for decades now. 

Charlie discovered the Black Pendant mafia.

It was an accident at first. He was researching a particularly strange drug found in the bodies of several dead homeless in New York City when he found a connection with the deaths of two distinctly different American military troops in Afghanistan. The drug’s chemical spectroscopy was insanely complex, meaning it had to have been carefully engineered by someone with unprecedented levels of money and influence. 

Charlie remembers not thinking much of that conclusion, chalking the case up to some Wall Street tycoons investing in harder drugs because cocaine and heroine wouldn’t do the trick anymore… until he found it in the body of the deceased Chief of Police two years later. He had died by going berserk and laying open fire on all his subordinates before planting a bullet in his own head.

This would mark the start of Charlie’s most trying case, the one he reopened just under three years ago and is working on still. Bit by bit, he uncovered the inner working of one of the most advanced criminal empires, one that existed solely for the trade of this mystery drug. None of Charlie’s clues about this drug logically made any sense; he would find its trademark chemical sequence on the bloody fingerprints of wildly different people in different states. The victims of the drugs would be anybody from political figures to retired professor, murdered by army veterans and gang members alike. The only characteristic all the criminals shared was a black pendant that would hang from their necks like a noose.

In all the leads Charlie acquired over the years, there was absolutely no routine with the Black Pendant mafia (he called them that for lack of a better name) whatsoever. It both infuriated and intrigued him.

But nothing would peak Charlie’s interest quite like this afternoon.

He’s slogging away at bureaucratic something-or-the-others in his office when Jenkins stumbles in, phone in hand, the cable straining behind him.

“Charlie, you’ve got a call,” Jenkins’ tone is one of indifference, but the sheen of sweat on his balding head betrays him.

Charlie flicks a dismissive hand at his colleague, keeping his cigarette pinched between the index and middle finger of his other hand as he turns a page of his paperwork. “I’ll get it later. This new vending license policy is bullshit and the mayor knows it, but he’s still making us work Saturdays to sign it.” He takes a long drag, grimacing through another five signatures. “God, I fucking hate election season.”

“I think this is urgent, Charlie.” He figures Jenkins would have left him alone by now, but the man is standing in the doorway looking pale. “It’s from Max.”

That makes Charlie stop. He takes a final huff of his cigarette before tapping it out into the ashtray at his desk and follows Jenkins out into the hall. 

Max Lobo is a long time friend of his from college and one of the only people unaffiliated with police that Charlie told about the mystery drug, solely for his skills in investigative journalism. Any news from him was always a good lead, but he had gone silent a while ago and they fell out of touch.

Charlie takes the office phone from Jenkins and leans on the other side of the hallway from where it’s hooked up. “Max, it’s been months, pal. You better have something brilliant for me to make up for this.”

“Nice to see you too, Charlie,” Max’s voice rasps from the other end, and Charlie’s taken aback by how anxious he sounds. “Listen, I know this is crazy but I need you to come down to Cape Cod right now.”

“Woah, woah, slow down,” Charlie answers, already reaching for the notepad in his pocket. He cradles the phone between his ear and shoulder, pen hovering over paper while he waits for Max to speak. “Tell me all the information you got.”

“No - Charlie, this isn’t about the Black Pendant case,” Max says in exasperation. Charlie can almost hear the man running a hand through his hair, cursing. “This is about my kid.”

Charlie pauses. “Didn’t know you had children, Lobo.”

“Please, please hear me out,” Max is saying. “You remember Griffin’s kid brother, right? Aslan?”

Yeah, Charlie remembers Aslan. The boy that wouldn’t give him more than a curt nod when they saw Griffin off to the military all those years ago, but watched him leave through the window of Max’s house with a frown that didn’t suit a child’s face. “I do, but I don’t understand. What about him?”

“They’re saying Aslan killed a man this morning. I know that boy, Charlie. He’s not a murderer, but he’s gone missing and they’re putting him on the news and I -”

“Max, calm down,” Charlie scratches at his ear, perplexed. He’s disappointed that Max doesn’t have news about the case, but he owes it to him and Griffin to help Aslan out in times of need. The murder is an interesting addition though, and he’ll admit he’s incredibly curious to see how Griffin’s baby brother grew up. “Tell me what happened to the man.”

“Well -” Max takes a few deep, steadying breaths, trying to calm down. “Well, let’s see, uh. The man’s name is Frederick Arthur, early 20s. He was found outside a gas station about six blocks from where I last saw Ash the night before.” A breath. “He’s a mess, Charlie, his face is all red and swollen and shit but he’s not really hurt anywhere else -”

“- Just the face?” Charlie asks, jotting notes. “Jesus, he’d have to take a bashing to die from that -”

“And they said he had an accomplice, that he ran away with an accomplice.” Max rails on, not hearing Charlie in his own anxiety. “But the kid’s only got like one friend and Shorter’s looking for him too, I talked to him this morning -”

“Max.”

“I don’t know, man, I’m kind of freaking out -” 

“Max.”

“He’s a good kid, I swear -”

“MAX.” Charlie yells so loud that Jenkin peers at him from across the office, worried. “I’m not blaming you or Aslan, okay? We’re going to figure this out.”

Max is silent. “...Okay. It’s just, it’s local police here and they’re not going to do any extravagant tests or investigation. I’m worried that they’ve...already come to a conclusion about the case.”

“I understand,” Charlie snaps the notebook shut and puts it back into his pocket. “Okay Max, worst case is Aslan got onto the interstate or something, but even then he’s only a few hours away. Do you want me to drive down and we can look around for him?”

“Yes, God fuck- yes,” Max breathes. “Thank you so much, Charlie, I owe you one.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself there, Lobo,” Charlie smiles. “This is Griff’s brother we’re talking about, I’d have helped out anyway.”

Max laughs. “Griff’s ears are ringing right now somewhere in Afghanistan and he doesn’t know why.”

“I bet,” Charlie grins. “See you, Max.”

“Okay, see you.”

Charlie leaves a notice on his desk and pulls on his jacket as he leaves the police office, paperwork forgotten. There’s a familiar buzz in his veins at the thought of a new mystery, one that lightens his step as he walks out to the parking lot and drives home to pack for a three day trip. This is a break in his Saturday routine, but he doesn’t mind because something of higher precedence lingers.

He has a murder to solve and a boy to find.

* * *

 

“So how long do I have?” Eiji sorts through cartons of eggs and pretends to examine each of them, trying for nonchalance. “For the red light?”

It’s the late morning after Ash told him everything, and a bit more than a day since they met. It feels more like a week with all that happened the last night.

“Don’t say things like that,” Ash leans casually and props his elbows on the grocery cart. He’s pretending too, pretending that everything is normal, but there’s no ignoring the newfound heaviness in the air between them. He adds, almost flippantly, “Dino’ll have to kill me to get to you.”

They’ve been playing some sort of game since last night. 

Ash told Eiji about walking into the bar and meeting the man named Cain, who Eiji recognized as the barista who had given him that ‘glass of water’ that neither looked nor tasted like it. He talked about how Cain had promised him an escape from the red light and called other members of the network instead. He hadn’t mentioned Eiji’s unconsciousness but he looked so shaken by it that Eiji decided not to ask.

And then Ash had told him about his past, his childhood. He told Eiji about the crimes he committed in this underground network that were so bad he still had nightmares from them. The nights spent awake and frightened because he didn’t have a place to sleep. How every day he was crying out for help but couldn’t make a sound.

Eiji’s heart broke for him. He had never felt so helpless, not being able to do anything for Ash while he leaned on Eiji’s shoulder and wept. All he could do was be by Ash’s side, stay with him, stay strong for him.

He still feels like he could have done more, and that thought sits in his stomach like a heavy stone.

But when the sun peeked over the horizon, Ash had shut himself off again, masked by a calmer, more perfect version of him that made jokes and sarcastic remarks and couldn’t give a shit. Eiji didn’t want perfect, but he played the game, joking back and smiling and pretending everything was fine.

"Eiji? Hey," A hand waves over Eiji’s face, scattering his thoughts. "Where'd you go?" 

“Ah - nowhere,” Eiji blushes, realizing he's been staring at the eggs bunch for the past few minutes.

"Hmm, this one's nice," Ash mocks Eiji’s scrutiny, taking the carton from Eiji and turning it in his hands. He gives Eiji a carefree smile. "It escapes me that after I've told you about the red light and the network and everything, you're mostly worried about what we're having for lunch." He sets the eggs in their cart gently. “We should have hit the road by now. I don’t like how close we still are to Marvin and his goons.”

Eiji gives Ash a look, but that last part is still terrifyingly true. They’re still in a supermarket located in that strip mall where they had stopped that morning, shivering in the snowy quiet. They can’t be more than a few miles from that bar. From Cain. 

Eiji knows their safety is a false sense of hope.

Eiji dismisses the thought and sets off on his next mission: figuring out where Americans keep the rice in their godforsaken grocery stores. “Ash, right now we need  _ rest _ more than anything. You’ve had maybe four hours of sleep in the last day and I almost fell asleep forever -” He notices Ash flinch. “- A joke. That was a joke.” He turns into an isle and finds the boxed rice. Bingo. “Either way, we need to stay someplace safe and come up with a plan to avoid those people before we travel again.”

He turns and grins, drinking in how very tame Ash looks wheeling a grocery cart behind begrudgingly. “Besides, what mobsters will look for us in a grocery store on a Sunday? There’s only mothers here.”

Ash is silent for a while. Then finally, “Okay, you have a point.” Eiji hands him two small boxes of rice--why the rice comes in boxes and not bags like Japan, he has no idea--and Ash sets them into the grocery cart. “But where else are we going to find a safe place? We’ve lost the car and any motels within this vicinity are fucking death traps anyway. I mean, just look at us.” He gestures at himself, incredulous.

So Eiji looks, really looks. The blonde is ragged with exhaustion, dark purplish circles formed under his red-rimmed eyes and a bruise blossoming on his left cheekbone. He’s bleeding from his lip and his shirt is ripped and stained with blood that isn’t his. Eiji knows he looks just as bad, probably worse than Ash; he feels like a wrung out towel and his hair is a rat’s nest.

 A giggle bursts out of his mouth before he can help it. “Sorry. We look like -” He clamps a hand over his mouth to stop his fit of laughter but Ash’s stunned expression makes him double over. He gasps out, in between breaths, “We look like we escaped from some Japanese horror movie.”

Ash stares at him in awe, his expression caught between amusement and concern. “Are you deranged?”

Eiji just dissolves, laughing hysterically until his cheeks hurt. He knows he really does sound like a crazy person, but somehow the obvious unfunniness of their situation just makes it more hilarious. After a few moments, even Ash is genuinely smiling now too, his eyebrows raised and mouth quirked up.

“I’m sorry,” Eiji whimpers with laughter, wiping tears from his eyes. “No, you’re right, it’s not funny.” He’s been thinking about it too. His laughter prompts a flood of other emotions, not all of them good. Eiji sombers up pretty quickly. “To be honest, I was hoping the tears would come out laughing instead of crying.”

Things get a lot less funny then. 

As soon as he’s admitted it, Eiji  _ is _ crying. "Sorry." All the pent-up frustration from the past few days surges up inside him at once, and suddenly there’s more tears running down his cheeks and his laughter sounds a lot more like hiccup sobs. “I want to stay strong for you, but I’m so scared. I’m scared of gunshots and Arthur and - and all this violence. I know it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through and that makes me so angry.” He slumps against the grocery isle, knocking the boxes of rice out of place. He swipes at his eyes with one sweater sleeve, shuddering. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Stop that,” In one motion, Ash is in front of him, brow furrowing. Eiji sees his jaw working for a few seconds and then he’s cupping Eiji’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing away the tears. His voice is incredibly soft. “What did I say about saying sorry?”

Eiji freezes. He can’t think to respond. Ash is so, so close. He can see every fleck of green in Ash’s irises, count every blonde eyelash.

It reminds him of a memory from last night that he shoved into the deepest, darkest depths of his mind. The overwhelming feeling of Ash pressed up behind him in the tightness of the storage closet, warm and solid and strangely comforting even as the man Ash named Marvin Crosby was reaching towards them through the slats of the door. Eiji shivers involuntarily.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” Ash continues, murmuring. “I can’t have expected you to see all that shit and not be shaken about it. If I could change anything, I would have made sure you were nowhere near that.” His fingers curl behind Eiji’s ears and Eiji hopes to any God listening that Ash is unaware of the effect it has on his heartbeat.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Eiji,” Ash is saying. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this shitshow, I’m sorry that you were drugged and I’m so fucking sorry that I couldn’t do a fucking thing.” His gaze takes on a new intensity, jade eyes positively hypnotizing. “And you’ve been so, so kind about everything that I feel like I don’t deserve to be here. But Eiji, I swear on the fucking stars that I’m going to get you to California or I’ll die trying.”

Eiji has stopped crying by now but Ash’s hands don’t budge. No, that’s not true. One of them has migrated to the nape of Eiji’s neck, tangling in his hair. It’s like he doesn’t even know the effect he has on Eiji. “Also, I don’t know how good I am at this caring shit. I don’t know, I think I just want to make you feel...safe…” Ash’s voice trails off, like he’s just now noticing his proximity to Eiji, the position they’re in. Green eyes travel down to Eiji’s mouth and linger. 

Ash’s breath catches.

Time slows as he watches Ash look at him, their noses almost brushing. It’s all too much; Ash is all Eiji sees, hears, feels. In that moment, they could be the only two people in the world and nothing would have changed.

Everything is Ash.

A new feeling is creeping through Eiji’s veins, filling him up with warmth until he feels like he might burst.

In a way he does. 

Out of nowhere, an outrageously loud hiccup erupts from Eiji’s parted lips. Ash blinks, and the moment is over.

Before he can say anything, Ash is pulling away from him, clearing his throat. He looks away, and Eiji wonders if he’s imagining the dusting of pink on his cheeks. “Uh. Anyway, I’m going to find some water.”

It’s an obvious lie. Water was the first thing they put in the cart.

“Okay,” Eiji squeaks out anyway. “I’ll be here.”

Ash turns to leave and pauses, giving him one last cautious look. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yep,” Eiji nods vigorously. “Yep, yep, I’m fine.”

“Okay, good.” And he’s gone.

Eiji lets out a breath, sliding down the shelf onto his butt. His legs are jelly and his heart pounds in his ear, loud as a bell. His face is scorching hot when he touches it with his own hands and wonders, in true Ash-like fashion, what in the  _ hell  _ just happened.

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Thanks so much for your amazing comments and I hope you liked this latest chapter! To make things a bit clearer, Charlie learns about 'Aslan' Saturday afternoon, which is a day before Ash and Eiji go to the grocery store. I'm going to try and make my timelines match up from now on, sorry :(
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please give it a kudos! If not, please don't! Let me know if you have any feedback and I'd love to hear it :D
> 
> See you next Tuesday!


	18. After the Storm (Kali Uchis)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick recap of our story so far:  
> Ash and Eiji are inching across America, now burdened with the horrors of the incident with the Black Pendant. Currently, they are recuperating and thinking of a plan to cross the US with the weight of Eiji's red light on their shoulders.  
> Meanwhile, Shorter and Yut-Lung have embarked on a quest to save their friend, although they are cursed with Yut-Lung's poor driving and the unfortunate news that Papa Dino Golzine has... noticed Ash. They are on their way to save Ash from the unknown kidnapper (?) slash Ash's murder accomplice.  
> On the other hand, Max has reached out to Charlie in New York to help him investigate Ash's murder of Frederick Arthur. 
> 
> Who will reach Ash and Eiji first?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The sun'll come out  
> Nothing good ever comes easy  
> I know times are rough  
> But winners don't quit  
> So don't you give up."  
> \- Kali Uchis, After the Storm

Charlie gets to Cape Cod that Saturday evening.

He’d be lying if he said his urgency to investigate was just because Ash was Griff’s little brother. His skin was crawling with excitement at the prospect of a new case, a missing case. Those were some of his favorites.

He mulled over the little information Max had told him over the phone while driving down to the little town in Massachusetts. Aslan was about twelve, maybe thirteen when Charlie had seen him last so now he was probably eighteen years old. According to the Max, the cashier working at the gas station when Arthur died said she saw Aslan beat Frederick Arthur with his bare hands until the man was unmoving before running off with an unidentified friend. Ash and the other person had not been seen since that moment.

According to Max, Frederick was not the greatest guy; he had bullied Ash from childhood and the two had a rocky relationship at best, but that was not enough of a motive to spontaneously kill the man all these years later. 

In addition, there was the sheer unlikelihood of an eighteen-year-old killing a twenty-something heavier set man in a fisfight. Charlie rarely met teenagers with the capability to inflict harm, much less kill an older man experienced in fighting or violence.

The whole situation is in itself a bit odd.

However, compared to what he found at the crime scene, this is nothing.

 

Charlie arrives at the Gas n Go on the outskirts of town and barely takes two steps from his car before getting strangled in Max’s grizzly bear hug.

“You came, Charlie!” He can hear Max blubber into his shoulder while he fights for air. “You have no idea how much this means to me, dude, the police won’t tell me anything.”

“Nice to see you too, Max,” Charlie croaks as he escapes the vice-like hug. “Glad to be here. Now, we don’t have much time. Where’s the body?”

Max claps him on the back so hard Charlie feels his teeth clack. “Good man. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Max leads Charlie closer to the crime scene and in the thickening mob of spectators that the local police are having trouble holding back. As they skirt the perimeter of the yellow caution tape, Charlie catches a glimpse of a bloodstain on the asphalt that must have once been Frederick Arthur. He swallows, thickly. What kind of person did Griffin’s brother grow up to be?

Max catches him staring and reads his mind. “I’m telling you, this isn’t Ash. Sure, he may be a troubled kid, but who can blame him with the situation going on with Jim -” He catches himself. “Anyway, Ash wouldn’t do this, I swear to you.”

Charlie nods, understanding. “I get it, Max. He’s Griffin’s blood after all, he’s got to be at least a little bit of a stubborn dick.”

“That’s true,” Max smiles back, still looking a bit stricken. “You’d love him, Charlie.”

They reach two policeman exchanging words in a corner of the yellow-taped plot of parking lot, quiet enough so that the local news reporters can’t pick up on them.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Charlie holds out a hand to shake with them while flicking open his NYPD badge with the other. “I’m Detective Charles Dickinson and I’ve been assigned this case by some of my higher ups back in New York.”

The taller of the two policemen give him and Max a suspicious look, but he shakes Charlie’s hand anyway. “Pleasure,” He says, gruffly. Charlie doesn’t blame him; warding off a crowd like this the whole day would leave anyone in a sour mood. “Might I ask why New York is interested in a small town murder case?”

Charlie’s been asked questions like this when he investigated the Black Pendant case in other states all over the US. He answers without a second thought, “It’s part of an ongoing investigation dealing with gang violence in New York City. I heard Arthur here has a few connections upstate so I thought I’d take a look.” It’s an educated guess, but by the look of the other policeman’s face Charlie knows he struck a chord.

The taller one begrudgingly nods to him before scribbing something into a notebook pad and handing the slip over. “This is the address to the medical examiners’. If you need a report or anything, they’re the ones to ask.”

“Thank you, sir,” Charlie tries not to give away how pleased he feels. Local police may not look the type, but they were the easiest to crack open.

He turns back to Max, whose jaw is hanging in awe, and motions for his car. “Shall we?”

 

Frederick Arthur’s body, as it turns out, is more mutilated than even Charlie expected. The moment Max saw it, he turned an odd shade of green and muttered a quick, “I’ll wait outside.” before scurrying out of the coroner’s office.

His face is a mess of red, almost indistinguishable. Broken nose, swollen and bruised lips, black eyes, the whole works. There’s a smattering of other bruises decreasing in number until halfway down his torso, varying in size and intensity. Charlie lets out a low whistle. “I’m still finding it hard to imagine a teenager being responsible for this scale of damage.”

The examiner next to him adjusts her glasses, not nearly as surprised. “This may be biased, but my daughter goes to school with Aslan. The boy has been quite… notorious for exploits. In my personal opinion, this is very well within his realm.”

Charlie turns to her, incredulous. “Who the hell is this kid-?”

“- Although, if I might add,” She picks up a clipboard that’s hanging from the end of the cart that hold’s Arthur’s body. “A quick drug test showed that Arthur was under a considerable level of alcoholic intoxication. As well as something else our equipment couldn’t quite pick up.”

Charlie holds out a hand. “May I?”

“Of course,” The examiner hands him the clipboard before making her way to the exit of the room. “I have some things to tend to so I’ll be in the lobby for the rest of your visit. Is there anything else you need, Dr. Dickinson?”

“I’m fine. Thank you, ma’am.” Charlie smiles, before almost impulsively asking, “Did Arthur have any belongings on his person, by the way?”

“Yes, actually,” She replies, gesturing to a Ziploc bag resting on the stand next to Arthur’s cart. “They will all be in that bag.” She disappears through the door after saying, “Let me know if you have any other questions.”

Charlie mutters back a quick thanks before analyzing the results of Arthur’s test. “Let’s see here…”

And then his eyes land on a frighteningly familiar sequence of chemicals picked up on the mass spectrometry results. His heart skips a beat.

It can’t be.

Excitement courses through his veins as Charlie carefully opens Arthur’s mouth with glove-covered hands. There’s the trademark foamy residue capping the man’s teeth.

It can’t be.

Charlie scrambles for the Ziploc, fingers shaking with adrenaline as he opens it to find--

\--A thin, dark pendant laying innocently beside a wallet and broken watch.

 

Oh, it fucking be.

  
  


Max is dozing off in his cream-and-brown pickup when Charlie bursts out the doors of the coroner’s office, giddy with excitement. “Max, open up!”

He almost feels sorry when the other man jerks awake, shrieking. He rolls down the window, growling. “You’re chipper as always, Charlie.”

“Sure, yeah,” Charlie is practically bouncing in his toes. “Anyway, I have good news and bad news.”

“Ah, fuck me,” Max pinches the bridge of his nose, still groggy. “Let’s hear the good first.”

“There’s a chance Ash didn’t kill Frederick Arthur.”

“GET THE FUCK,” Max startles completely awake. “Wha - How?”

“Arthur drank the Kool Aid,” Charlie makes the motion of popping a pill. “But that leads me to the bad news.”

“Hit me.”

Charlie pulls his hand out of his coat pocket, letting the pendant dangle from his closed fist as he does. Max’s eye bug out of his head. “No. No, no, no.”

“Arthur was a member of the Black Pendant mafia.”

He understands why Max stumbles for excuses. There might actually be a chance of Aslan’s safety if the Black Pendant wasn’t involved. “No, that’s not for sure,” Max is saying. “It could just be any pendant, you don’t know for sure -”

Charlie opens the pendant and makes sure Max sees the empty capsule inside. “It’s obvious, Max. For some reason, Arthur overdosed on that drug that’s inside every one of these necklaces and died from it.”

Max pales. “But that means - Don’t you realize what that implies, Charlie?”

That’s the part that absolutely doesn’t make sense to Charlie either. “Yeah, I do.” The implication terrifies and excites him.

 

“That means there’s a chance Aslan knows about the Black Pendant. And whatever drug this is that they distribute.”

  
  
  


“Oh my fuckin - Shorter, get your fucking hands off the dash, for fuck’s sake!” Yut-Lung slams the break out of spite, just to make Shorter lurch in his seat.

“Fuck you, too, shithead! This is MY van,” Shorter retorts, kicking his legs up. “Ugh, my ass hurts from sitting in this car so fucking long.”

“That’s because you have the attention span of a five-year-old,” Yut-Lung’s eye twitches. “Stop messing with the radio, it’s distracting me.”

“Oh wow, really?” Shorter draws out the last word, filling it with sarcasm. “I couldn’t tell because you’ve been driving like a FUCKING APE for the last day.”

They’ve crossed a few states on I-80 now, and it’s just now coming to Shorter’s attention just how reckless their plan was. It took them the whole night to throw together enough clothes and toiletries for themselves and Ash once they find him.

If they find him in the next few days.

Now, it’s almost midmorning the next day and they’re still driving down the fucking highway. At this point, Ash could have exited I-80 a hundred miles back and they’d have no clue, driving like dumbasses further West to try and find him.

Shorter still has no idea how they’re going to find Ash. He feels helpless, doing nothing but shuffling through radio stations just because he’s fucking bored and annoying Yut-Lung is the only way to simultaneously entertain himself and let out his frustration.

“SHORTER, I SWEAR TO FUC -” Yut-Lung begins, and then pauses mid-yell to listen to the radio, wide-eyed. “Wait, go back a few stations.”

“You know I’m not going to let you listen to the station you want, Yue,” Shorter smirks, finding evil satisfaction in the way Yut-Lung’s eye twitches. “I knew you were a dumbass, but you surprise even me sometimes.”

“Shorter,” Yut-Lung’s voice is dead serious. “If you want what’s good for you, you are going to tune back a few stations or I swear to fuck I am crashing this van.”

“Fine, okay,” Shorter tunes back, holding long enough to hear a few seconds from each station in the radio static.

“--buy now and get a thirty percent discount on t--”

“--’ve got 75 in the triangle, 67 in the triad, and--”

“--locals reported hearing gunfire in Matthews, due to a shootout in Fortson’s off Maynard Street--”

“That one,” Yut-Lung says. “Listen.”

“--saying the police were notified of two men causing havoc in the local bar and gunshots were fired. The witness account describes them as two young men, whereas police encountered three men and caused an active shootout lasting up to one hour. More than one hundred rounds were fired and the more than two police officers were fatally wounded. But the real mystery is why the shootout occurred and what prompted those men to snap. Let’s hear from--”

Shorter and Yut-Lung listen to the rest of the report in complete silence. It’s only after the station goes to a commercial that Shorter turns off the radio and stares at Yut-Lung wide-eyed.

“...Do you think that was Ash?” Shorter asks, breaking the silence.

“Do shootouts coincidentally occur in -” Shorter glances at an exit sign on the road. “- Abbotsville? In the middle of nowhere?” Yut-Lung clicks the indicator, swerving lanes. Shorter is too shaken to yell at him about it. “This a chance I will take.”

Shorter knows they both heard the witness’s account of two people in the bar when the fight in the bar started. It’s the same thing that pesky reporter had mentioned yesterday at the crime scene. Two young men. 

It was only a matter of time before the media connected the dots between Arthur’s death and the violence in Abbotsville. Then they’d surely be fucked.

“Who do you think is with Ash?” Shorter asks. “Everyone is saying Ash is with someone. Do you think he’s being held without his will?”

He half expects Yut-Lung to snap at him for saying something that stupid--even hopes for it--but the other man is silent. Shorter’s heart sinks.

If Ash has been caught by the Corsican mafia already, they might not find him alive.

Yut-Lung says, “Do you remember the address of the bar?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Shorter squints, trying to remember. “Ah, fuck, I don’t… Shit, wait! It’s a Fortson’s off Maynard Street.”

Yut-Lung glances at him, trying to stifle his look of surprise. “Nice to know you’re not a complete fucking idiot when it comes to the important things, Shorter.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shorter fires back half-heartedly, smiling back nevertheless. “Take this exit and make a right.”

Shorter looks outside at the blur of trees of the highway, drumming his fingers on the windowsill. Ash was somewhere out there. And with him, another posible Black Pendant member. The question lingers in his mind, burning like an incessant siren in his gut.

 

They had found Ash, but at what cost?

  
  
  


Eiji loads his groceries onto the conveyor belt and prays for a miracle.

He left most all items of importance back with his car, including his money. All he has with him is a credit card he’s not sure the cashier will accept (based off his experience with that girl back in Cape Cod) and a handful of coins, half of which are Japanese.

He knows Ash has a bit of cash with him, but the blonde has disappeared somewhere else in the store since their last… interaction? He’s not even sure what to call it. Eiji gets flustered everytime he only thinks about it so he still hasn’t figured out how to face Ash again, much less look him in the eyes.

It’s a busy Sunday. Children chase each other around their mother’s legs despite their stern whispers, slipping on the waxy tile floor. Music wafts from the tinny overhead speakers, somehow just as vibrant as the plastic packaging of candy, soda, magazines on the shelves that flank Eiji. He marvels at it all while he waits in the large checkout line and lets himself get lost in the American dream, imagining what these peoples’ lives must be like. He reaches for his camera before realizing he must have left it in the car sometime yesterday and not gone back.

A clatter of coins behind Eiji brings him out of his reverie.

“Oh, goodness,” The lady behind Eiji exclaims before struggling to bend over to pick the coins. She looks to be in her late sixties, but her eyes are bright with an inner youth that is much more stubborn than time.

“I can get that for you,” Eiji says. Eiji’s hand reaches the ground before hers, and he hands the change back over with a smile.

She smiles and her face ripples with good-natured wrinkles. “Thank you, young man.”

Eiji laughs, sheepishly. “Ah, no, it was nothing, really.”

The woman just tsks, opening her purse so Eiji can drop the coins into it. “Well, aren’t you a gentlemen. Don’t change; there’s not many like you left.” 

“That will be $56.35, sir,” The cashier is saying, and Eiji goes pale realizing that all of his produce has already been checked out. He gulps, feeling a dread-filled sense of deja vu.

“Could you try my card?” He hands over his credit card and hopes this grocery store is not particular to credit cards from America.

The cashier’s look confirms all of his worst fears. “It’s declining. Do you have another form of payment?”

“I - I have some cash…” Eiji reaches for his wallet. “I’m not sure if it will be enough, but -”

“I’ll pay for the gentleman,” The lady behind him interjects, holding out her own credit card. She winks at Eiji, crow’s feet crinkling.

Eiji flushes, waving his hands at her. “No, I couldn’t possibly take that -”

“Oh, please,” She presses her card forward with alarming speed and the cashier takes it, ringing him out. Then, she grins at him. “Too bad it’s already done!”

Eiji flails. “Thank you so much, but I don’t want to be indebted to you -”

She’s already hauling her items onto the belt to be checked out. “Then… why don’t you help me load these groceries into my car and we can it even, hmm, my dear?”

“I…” Eiji can’t seem to find a problem with that. It’s not like he has money to pay her back anyway. His hands lower, surrendering. “Okay.”

“What’s your name, dear?” She says, already putting her card back into her purse and making to leave.

“I’m Okumura Eiji,” He responds, hanging a paper bag on each arm and holding one close to his chest. “Nice to meet you.”

“Well, Okumura, I’m Celia Coleman. It’s very nice to meet you, too,” She holds out a hand to shake and Eiji does his best to balance the groceries on his other arm.

“No, ah - It’s Eiji, actually,” He laughs. “Okumura is my last name.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” Ms. Coleman asks.

“In Japan, we say the surname first,” Eiji smiles sheepishly, scratching his head. “I guess I’m still getting used to the America.”

“Well, then, Mr. Okumura,” She amends, before pulling out her keys and starting out of the store. “Shall we?”

 

Despite the snow on the ground, the midday sun is warm on Eiji’s back as he walks out into it, stumbling a bit under the weight of the grocery bags.

“Are you visiting from Japan, Eiji?” Ms. Coleman asks. She’s been asking him a lot of questions as she leads him toward a Mercedes Benz and a busted up Sedan. To Eiji’s absolute surprise, she clicks a button on her keys and the Mercedes quirks back. She makes no move to get in her car or , completely engaged in the conversation, so Eiji awkwardly stands there for a while.

“Y - yes, actually,” He flushes. “Am I that obvious?”

“Oh, honey, you’re an open book,” She laughs. “So why come to tiny, boring Abbotsville of all places?”

“Well, I’m supposed to have gone to California directly for a photography apprenticeship, but I arrived a week early so I could start in New York and make my way over,” Eiji says. “I think I underestimated how large America is, though.”

“Hmm, you betcha,” Ms. Coleman smiles. “You’ve got a long way left to go.” She finally pops the trunk open and Eiji unloads her things into it. He shifts his own grocery bag until it’s comfortable in his arms.

“That’s true. It’s been… a rough few days,” Eiji says. From the gas station fight to the bar shoot out, he doesn’t know if he either came unprepared or somehow got really unlucky with his trip. Well… he met Ash, so maybe not completely unlucky. “But I think I’m having much more fun than I’ve had in years.”

“That’s the US for you,” She says, cheerfully. “Well, I suppose it’s been difficult, right? With that dysfunctional card of yours.”

“Hahah… yeah, maybe,” Eiji grins. “To be honest, I’ve just been sleeping in my car since I came.” 

“That’s horrible,” Ms. Coleman says, scolding. “You’re young now, but your back is going to get back at you for that when you’re older, you know.”

“I’m sure,” He smiles. Then, Eiji hears a familiar patter of feet against asphalt, getting louder and louder.

Ms. Coleman quirks a graying eyebrow at something over Eiji’s shoulder. “Is that your friend?”

Eiji turns just in time to see Ash barreling towards him. Before he can say anything, Ash closes the space between them, gripping his shoulders with iron hands. The grocery bags slip from Eiji’s grasp and falls on ground with a sickening crack.

Ash doesn’t seem to notice. “Holy fucking shit, Eiji,” He’s saying, breathing heavily. “Are you trying to give me a panic attack? I nearly got a fucking aneurism looking around the place for you and I thought you had just up and left without saying anything to me -” He notices Ms. Coleman for the first time. “Who are  _ you _ ?”

“I didn’t know you had a friend, Eiji,” Ms. Coleman frowns, but her eyes are twinkling with mischief.

“Wha-” Ash’s eyes dart between Eiji and Ms. Coleman. Then he’s whirling back on Eiji, twice as angry, “You two know each other?”

“I - she just paid for the groceries -” Eiji gestures down to the crumpled bag where an indistinguishable liquid is seeping out onto the road. “- which are probably ruined now thanks to you, and I offered to carry her bags back to her car. I don’t understand why you’re so worked up, it’s not a big deal?”

“Not a big deal?” Ash echoes, incredulous, dropping his hands from Eiji’s shoulders. He takes a step back. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

“If I may say something -” Ms. Coleman starts.

“Save it, granny,” Ash turns to leave. “I’m leaving.”

“Hey! Ash, wait,” Eiji yelps, grabbing his wrist. “You need to say sorry to Ms. Coleman for being disrespectful and ruining the things she paid for.” 

“That’s all?” For a second, Ash just stares at him expectantly. Then, he’s wrenching his arm away and spitting out, “Fine. I’m  _ so  _ fucking sorry.”

“Where are you going?” Eiji asks.

“What the fuck does it matter to you?” Ash growls, not bothering to turn around.

Eiji waits for him to stop, turn around, but he doesn’t. His figure disappears around the back of the store before Eiji realizes, stomach dropping, that he might not come back.

All he can manage is a quick “I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back.” before rushing after him.

  
  


He finds Ash sulking behind the store, sitting against the wall and prodding at the gravel with the end of his shoes.

“Ash,” Eiji jogs up to him. “Hey.”

Ash won’t meet his eyes.

“Are you mad?” Eiji asks. “Did I say something wrong?”

There’s a terrifying pause. He finally says, “I’m not mad.”

“Then, why -” Eiji starts. “Why did you say you were having a… aneurism? Is that bad?”

Ash sighs. “It’s an exaggeration. I guess I’m kind of mad you left the store without telling me.”

“I couldn’t find you!” Eiji throws up his hands. “You went somewhere for water we already had -” Ash definitely goes red at that. “- so I thought I would just check out and wait for you at the entrance.”

The blonde huffs at that, but he’s less visibly frustrated than before. “...I thought you just got, I don’t know, fed up with everything and left me.” He says again, quieter. “I thought you left.”

“Ash,” Eiji sighs. “Why on earth would I leave? I’m lost without you.”

The other boy inhales sharply at that, bringing his arm up to cover his face. His voice is muffled by a sleeve, “You can’t… you can’t just say things like that.”

“It’s the truth,” Eiji says, a bit embarrassed himself. But it is. “If that’s what this is about, I’m done fighting with you about silly things.”

He holds out a hand, praying to anyone listening that Ash takes it. “Come on.”

Ash looks at Eiji’s hand and then up at him. “You can’t be serious. I’m not some fucking child.”

“I’m leaving,” Eiji threatens.

“Bullshit.” But Ash’s hand is in his anyway and Eiji pulls him up. 

He tries to smother the way his chest flutters at the touch.

 

To Eiji’s utmost surprise, Ms. Coleman is waiting near her car when they return.

“Well, you two took your damn time,” She crosses her arms.

“Why’d you wait?” Ash asks, suspicion creeping into his voice.

Ms. Coleman gives him a stern look before pulling a wallet out of her purse. “This fell out from Eiji’s pocket when you nearly ran him over.”

“Thank you so much, Ms. Coleman.” His face burns.

She hands him the wallet and gives him a sweet smile. “Now. Do you boys know where your parents are? Because I’m not so sure I’m alright with the two of you running amok causing a riot like this.” She fans herself even though the air is biting and cold. “You two took years off my life just now.”

Eiji squares his shoulders. “Well, I’m nineteen, actually.”

Ms. Coleman sizes him up despite being a head shorter than him. “Sure you are, sweetie.” She looks pointedly at Ash. “And you?”

Ash coughs and his voice goes abruptly low. “Twenty.”

She snorts. “Now, that’s even harder to believe. Where are your parents?”

Eiji says “Japan” at the same time that Ash says “I don’t know.”

He must admit that they deserve the awkward silence that follows.

“My word,” Ms. Coleman looks between the two of them. “Have you two got a home? Should I call the police?”

 

That gives Eiji an idea.

 

“Actually, no,” He says. “We’re hitchhiking our way across the US because our car broke down a while ago, but it hasn’t been going too well. We barely have enough money to eat and less of a place to sleep. I don’t know how we’ll make it to California.”

He feels Ash’s eyes glaring at him without looking, and continues. “So if it’s not too much to ask, could you give us a ride as far West as you can go?”

He spares a glimpse at Ash and the boy looks downright murderous, his gaze sharp enough to cut.

“Of course, my dears,” Ms. Coleman says, using a handkerchief to dab at her crinkly eyes. “Of course I can. But only on one condition.”

“One condition?” Eiji asks.

“We start tomorrow,” She’s already propping open the door and pulling a seatbelt over herself. “You two obviously need a rest and some cleaning up, so let me save you from sleeping in your car and night and have you over.” She levels a stern gaze on Eiji. “You should speak to your parents about that card, too, honey, I have a phone at home.”

“You’re too kind, Ms. Coleman,” Eiji grins at her and moves to get in the car as well before Ash pulls him aside.

“Not that kind,” She corrects, smiling back. “That’s a wild story you’re hinting at, and I want to hear all of it over dinner.”

“Alright!” Eiji props open the back seat door and beckons for a mortified Ash. “Come on, Ash.”

“This is a fucking horrible idea,” He whispers furiously. “What if she an actual serial killer?”

“She’s a sweet old lady, Ash,” Eiji says, exasperated. “Besides, what other options do we have tonight?” He tries not to laugh as Ash moves to argue and falls silent. The harsh truth is that they’re both dead tired and hungry and this might be a blessing in disguise.

The stares at him apprehensively for a moment longer before shouldering past him to slide into the seats. “I’m fucking killing you if we get murdered.”

 

Eiji climbs in next to him and bumps his shoulder. He gives Ash a toothy smile and Ash almost-smiles back. “We’ll see, then.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this was a long chapter! I made a bunch of progress so I figured I would give an update before Tuesday just because I can :) As always, please please please give any feedback, good or bad! I love to hear from you guys <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Hope you liked this garbage. Please let me know of any characters you'd like introduced and I will try to integrate them. This is my first fic, any response is much appreciated!


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